Macular morphological changes in retinal vein occlusion with macular involvement and their association with macular ischemia

Abstract

Aim: The aim is to study the association between macular morphological changes and macular ischemia in retinal vein occlusion (RVO) involving macula by spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Settings and Design: Observational cross-sectional study. Materials and Methods: The study included a total of 31 eyes of 30 RVO patients involving macula divided into two groups on the basis of fundus fluorescein angiography: Group A (RVO with macular ischemia) and Group B (RVO without macular ischemia). In each patient, macular cube and horizontal HD raster scans of the macula were performed to evaluate quantitative (central foveal thickness [CFT]) and qualitative (loss of inner retinal layers, loss of foveal inner segment/outer segment [IS/OS] junction, and prominent middle-limiting membrane [p-MLM] sign) macular morphological changes, respectively. Statistical Analysis: The continuous and categorical data were analyzed using unpaired t-test and Fisher’s exact test, respectively, with GraphPad Prism 9 software. Results: The mean CFT was thinner in Group A (432.71 ± 172.30 µm) as compared to Group B (564.57 ± 151.16 µm) and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P < 0.05). In this study, we found that the loss of inner retinal layer and loss of foveal IS/OS junction were more commonly associated with the macular ischemia group and this difference was statistically significant P = 0.0245 and 0.0292, respectively. We did not find any significant relationship between p-MLM sign with macular ischemia. Conclusion: SD-OCT parameters such as CFT, loss of inner retinal layer, and loss of foveal IS/OS junction were observed to predict macular ischemia to some extent.