Total venous nature of retinal deep capillary plexus inferred by continuity of prominent middle limiting membrane sign in optical coherence tomography

Abstract

This study aimed to theoretically identify the vascular nature of the deep capillary plexus (DCP) by examining patients presenting with both paracentral acute middle maculopathy (PAMM) and prominent middle limiting membrane (p-MLM) sign and p-MLM sign alone in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). A retrospective review of the medical records of patients with retinal vein or artery occlusion from two tertiary medical centers was performed. Consecutive patients with a clinical diagnosis of all categories of retinal artery occlusion (RAO) and retinal vein occlusion (RVO) (branch or central and ischemic or non-ischemic) who had undergone SD-OCT imaging from January 2015 to May 2020 were recruited and their p-MLM signs and PAMM lesions were assessed. We included 118 patients who presented with p-MLM sign with or without PAMM lesions. Amon them, 40 were female and 78 were male, with a mean age of 61.1 years. Of the 109 patients with both p-MLM sign and PAMM lesions, 23 had branch RAO, two had branch RVO, 67 had central RAO, 13 had central RVO, and four had a combination of central RAO and central RVO. All nine patients with the p-MLM sign alone had central RVO accompanied by cystoid macular edema. In all the enrolled patients, the hyperreflective lines of the p-MLM sign were continuous, regardless of the type of PAMM lesions. In conclusion, when PAMM and p-MLM sign are examined together, further proof regarding the possible complete venous nature of the vasculature of the retinal DCP might be speculated.