الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Summary There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that glaucoma pathogenesis is related to vascular dysfunction (Grieshaber M. C. and Flammer J., 2005) The consensus on this issue, however, still has not been found due to the lack of adequate techniques for the study of ocular blood flow despite of different measurement tools. This makes it reasonable to search for new methods of the vascular bed’s visualization for the early diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma. Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) with the split-spectrum amplitude-decorrelation angiography algorithm has provided a quick and reproducible way to qualitatively and quantitatively show areas of decreased or altered perfusion in the eye.( Suh MH et al ,2016) The current study included 100 eyes from 100 patients divided into two groups: group A: Glaucoma patients (50 patients) and group B: Non glaucomatous Individuals (50 participants). It aims to compare the macular circulation in normal participants and glaucomatous participants in both superficial and deep retinal plexuses, to detect and characterize macular circulation defects in glaucoma and to correlate them with structural macular OCT parameters. According to our findings, there is a decrease in VD especially that of superficial layer in POAG patients in macular area, based on OCT-A measurements. Glaucomatous eyes have a significantly sparser superficial vessel density in the macula than do healthy eyes, and these vessel density measurements are significantly associated with the severity of visual field damage. Measurements of macular superficial vessel density show comparable diagnostic powers to other vascular or structural measurements for differentiating glaucomatous and healthy eyes. These findings offer new insights into the pathophysiology of glaucoma. Further studies excluding the effects of glaucoma medications are needed to investigate the relationship between vascular changes and glaucomatous damages. |