Abstract
Background and objectives: Ocular massage (OM) is used as a treatment option for acute retinal artery occlusion, under the assumption that it induces vessel dilatation and enhances perfusion. Since evidence of ocular perfusion alteration due to OM is lacking, we investigate the impact of OM on the hemodynamics of the posterior pole in healthy eyes in a noninvasive fashion by using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Materials and Methods: A prospective study was conducted on healthy volunteers, each of whom underwent measurements of intraocular pressure (IOP), central macular thickness (CMT), subfoveal choroidal thickness (SFCT), radial peripapillary capillary perfusion (RPCP), superficial capillary plexus perfusion (SCPP), deep capillary plexus perfusion (DCPP), choriocapillaris perfusion (CCP), Sattler’s layer perfusion (SLP) and Haller’s layer perfusion (HLP) before and after OM. OM was performed for 2 min, consisting of 10-s turns of compression and decompression of the globe. Results: A total of 21 eyes from 21 participants (median age 29) were included. After OM, IOP significantly declined (p < 0.001), while SFCT (p < 0.005), SCPP (p < 0.001), DCPP (p = 0.004) and CCP (p = 0.008) significantly increased. CMT, RPCP, SLP and HLP did not show any significant alteration due to OM. Changes in SCPP correlated positively with changes in CCP and vice versa. Conclusions: OCTA-based analysis in healthy adults following OM demonstrated a significant increase of retinal perfusion values, assumed to be due to failure of autoregulatory mechanisms. These findings may indicate a positive effect of OM as a treatment option for patients with acute retinal artery occlusion.
Highlights
Ocular perfusion mainly depends on the difference between the local arterial blood pressure (BP) and the intraocular pressure (IOP)
Completed further analysis only one eye of each participant waswere included andin laterality was Demographic and clinical data reported in Table and ten (47.6%) male assigned by chance, resulting inare
CC, correlation coefficient; p, p-value. In this prospective optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA)-based study, we investigated retinal and choroidal vascular alterations in healthy eyes after 2 min of Ocular massage (OM) with alternating 10-s turns of compression and decompression
Summary
Ocular perfusion mainly depends on the difference between the local arterial blood pressure (BP) and the intraocular pressure (IOP). Several investigations have revealed that moderate changes in IOP or BP did not significantly affect the retinal blood flow, in contrast to the choroidal vasculature [1,2,3,4,5]. Responsible for this insensitivity to changes in systemic perfusion pressure within the retinal vasculature is the absence of a neuronal innervation.
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