Functional and Structural Outcomes at the Foveal Avascular Zone with Optical Coherence Tomography Following Macula off Retinal Detachment Repair

BACKGROUND: Visual recovery following macula involving rhegmatogenous retinal detachment remains poorly understood. The aim of this work is to correlate the functional and the anatomical changes in retinal vasculature in the foveal avascular zone using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) after successful retinal reattachment repair and correlate this data with retinal thickness and post-operative visual recovery. METHODS: A prospective, comparative observational study of 28 eyes of 14 patients with 14 eyes undergoing macula off retinal detachment repair with pars plana vitrectomy, endo-laser and silicone oil-based tamponade compared with 14 fellow healthy eyes at 1, 6 and 12 weeks post-operative period. The study was conducted at the Research Institute of Ophthalmology, Giza, Egypt between February 2018 and August 2018. RESULTS: The foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area in the patients group was not significantly different compared to the control group and was found to be negatively correlated with the central retinal thickness in both the study and control group. The superficial capillary plexus (SCP) area at the FAZ was significantly larger than the deep capillary plexus (DCP) area at the FAZ in both the study and control group over the follow-up period. The DCP area at the FAZ was significantly larger at the 3rd follow-up than the 1st follow-up. The SCP FAZ area was significantly larger than the DCP FAZ area in both the study and control group over the follow-up period. BCVA was found to be negatively correlated to the retinal thickness of the temporal 3 mm paracentral quadrant with no correlation with central foveal thickness (CFT) and the FAZ area. CONCLUSION: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCTA are valuable noninvasive imaging tools to monitor and predict the structural changes at the foveal avascular zone during the recovery phase after successful retinal reattachment involving macula.