Capillary leakage measurement may help determine severity of optic nerve leakage

Measuring vascular leakage in glaucomatous optic nerve heads may help physicians judge the severity of optic nerve head leakage and provide additional information to help evaluate therapeutic regimens, according to a study.

Oliver Arend and colleagues in Germany enrolled 30 patients with primary open-angle glaucoma and 30 healthy age-matched controls to quantify the role of capillary leakage of the optic nerve head in digital fluorescein angiography. Fluorescein angiograms were taken on all subjects.

The ratio of optic nerve head fluorescence to retinal reference was significantly increased in patients with glaucoma compared with the healthy subjects. IOP, visual field indices and cup-to-disc ratios also differed significantly between the groups. Age and systolic pressure were not significantly different between the groups.

The study is published in the July issue of Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology.