This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Patients with anisometropic amblyopia may exhibit increased macular thickness
Br J Ophthalmol. 2011;95(12):1696-1699.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
According to spectral-domain optical coherence tomography findings, central macular thickness may increase significantly in patients with anisometropic amblyopia.
The prospective, institutional, cross-sectional, observational study included patients of at least 6 years of age whose retinal nerve fiber layer and macular thicknesses were measured using Cirrus HD-OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec) and compared with those of fellow eyes.
Forty-five patients had amblyopia (14 strabismic and 31 anisometropic), and 20 had non-amblyopic anisometropia. Mean retinal nerve fiber layer thickness did not differ significantly between amblyopic and fellow eyes. However, mean macular thickness was higher in amblyopic eyes (273.8 µm vs. 257.9 µm; P = .001); this finding was significant for the individual anisometropic group (P = .002) but not the strabismic group.
"Anisometropia alone did not produce such a difference, which points to a possible correlation between amblyopia and the development of the retinal layers," the study authors wrote, suggesting that their findings support the hypothesis of a thicker retina in amblyopic patients.
This was the first study to assess amblyopic eyes using spectral-domain OCT. Limitations included the inclusion of fewer strabismic amblyopes as compared with anisometropic amblyopes, likely distorting the comparison, and lack of a control group of normal children.