Evaluation of Retinal and Peripapillary Microvasculature in Grave’s Ophthalmopathy with OCT Angiography

Purpose: Thyroid eye disease (TED) is an autoimmune manifestation of dysthyroidism.The choroid is the vascular structure of the eye supplying the outer retina, so Changes in the choroidal Flow may be related to the pathogenesis of retina, choroid, and optic nerve. It’s not stablished weather the macular and peripapillary choroidal flow changes or not in the course of TED. Optical coherence tomography angiography has increasingly been used to evaluate the retinal vasculature in both normal eyes and retinal vascular pathologies. Besides, peripapillay microvacular changes have been studied in glaucomatous optic neuropathies using OCTA. This is the first study To evaluate, macular and peripapillary microvasculature in TED patients as well as macular and peripapillary choroidal flow. Methods: 54 patients (94 eyes) included in this study; 13 patients (21eyes) with active TED and 42 patients (77eyes) with not active TED; comparing with 34 normal matched subjects (64 eyes). All of them undergone OCTA to measure peripapillary and macular vessel density and choroidal flow. Results: The peripapillary choroidal flow was significantly reduced (p<0.05) in active patients compared to not active ones and normal eyes. Vessel density as well as macular choroidal flow had no significant change. Conclusion: Patients with active thyroid eye disease may have abnormal choroidal flow even in the absence of optic neuropathy detecting with OCTA.