Retinal thickness in children with anisohypermetropic amblyopia
Abstract
Purpose
To determine the retinal thickness in eyes of children with anisohypermetropic amblyopia, their fellow eyes, and eyes of age-matched controls. To assess the effects of optical treatment on the foveal thickness in eyes with anisohypermetropic amblyopia.
Materials and Methods
Twenty-five patients (6.0 ± 2.2 years, mean ± standard deviation) with anisohypermetropic amblyopia and 25 age-matched controls (5.6 ± 1.9 years) were studied. Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) was used. The foveal thickness and the thickness of the outer nuclear (ONL), photoreceptor inner segment (IS) layer, and outer segment (OS) layer were measured by the embedded OCT software.
Results
The length of the OS was significantly longer in the fellow eyes (48.2 ± 5.9 µm) than in the amblyopic eyes (42.9 ± 4.6 µm, P = 0.03). One year after the optical treatment of the anisohypermetropia, the best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) improved and the length of the OS was significantly increased (P = 0.0001). After optical treatment there was no more significant difference in the OS length between in the amblyopic eyes and fellow eyes (P = 0.94). The change of BCVA was significantly correlated with the change of the length of the OS one year after the treatment (r = 0.54; P = 0.0004).
Conclusions
We found anisohypermetropic amblyopic eyes had qualitative and quantitative differences in the microstructures of the retinal photoreceptor layers from control eyes. An increase in the OS length was detected in the amblyopic eyes after the optical treatment. There was a significant correlation between the increased OS length and better BCVA.
