Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography in Patients with Amblyopia

To determine the optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) parameters including foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and vessel density (VD) in the amblyopic eyes compared with the fellow sound eyes and the eyes of the non-amblyopic subjects. In this case–control study, a total of 23 eyes from unilateral amblyopic children were included as cases. The sound eye of the amblyopic children was considered as the internal control and the right eyes of the non-amblyopic children were considered as the external control. All participants underwent image recording with OCTA. In the present study, an equal number of 23 unilateral amblyopic eyes and 23 right eyes of non-amblyopic age- and sex-matched children were included as the cases and controls, respectively. The average age of participants in the case and controls were 9.86 ± 3.12 and 8.5 ± 2.35 years, respectively. Twelve patients (52.2%) in the case group and 14 subjects (60.9%) in the control group were female. Whole vascular density of the macula in superficial capillary plexuses (SCP) was significantly lower in the external controls compared with the other studied groups (P = .026). However, the VD of the deep capillary plexuses (DCP) was significantly greater in the external controls than cases and internal controls (P= .029). The average FAZ area was 0.26 ± 0.06 mm2 in amblyopic eyes that was significantly higher compared with fellow eyes (0.21 ± 0.07 mm2; P= .022), but it was not different with non-amblyopic eyes (0.22 ± 0.118 mm2). Based on our findings, there were no significant difference in the cases of foveal, parafoveal, and perifoveal in both superficial and deep vascular densities among amblyopic and non-amblyopic eyes, whereas deep whole density of the amblyopic eyes showed lower percent compared to non-amblyopic ones that indicates decrease blood supply of the amblyopic eyes in this region. Additionally, FAZ was larger in amblyopic eyes than internal controls.