Abstract
The purpose of this study was to compare the incidences of macular irregularities of elementary school (ES) and junior high school (JHS) students. This was a prospective cross-sectional observational study of 122 right eyes of 122 ES students (8–9 years) and 173 right eyes of 173 JHS students (12–13 years). Vertical cross-sectional images of the macula were obtained by optical coherence tomography. The eyes were classified based on the vertical symmetry of the posterior pole, and then sub-classified as convex-, flat-, concave-, or dome-shaped based on the direction of the curvature of the retinal pigment epithelium. One hundred and two eyes (83.6%) were placed in the symmetrical group in the ES students and 149 eyes (86.1%) in the JHS students. Twenty eyes (16.4%) were placed in the asymmetric groups in the ES students and 24 eyes (13.9%) in the JHS students. In symmetrical group, 78 and 118 eyes had a convex-shape (76.4 and 79.2%), followed by 22 and 29 eyes of dome-shaped group (21.6 and 19.4%) in ES and JHS students respectively. Because the incidences of the posterior pole shapes were not significantly different between the groups, it is likely that the macular irregularities develop before the age of ES.
Highlights
The purpose of this study was to compare the incidences of macular irregularities of elementary school (ES) and junior high school (JHS) students
A dome-shaped macula (DSM) is an inward protrusion of the macula that can be seen in the optical coherence tomographic (OCT) images[1,2,3]
We have recently developed a method to detect the irregular structures of the macula by magnifying the displayed image 8X in the anterior–posterior direction which improved the sensitivity of detecting abnormal shapes of the posterior pole of the eye
Summary
The purpose of this study was to compare the incidences of macular irregularities of elementary school (ES) and junior high school (JHS) students. An inferior staphyloma is an outward protrusion of the inferior macula as seen in OCT images[11,12,13] It is associated with irregularities in the shape of the macula including the tilted disc syndrome, focal retinal thinning, choroidal neovascularization, and serous retinal detachment[14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. A 2X magnification in the anterior–posterior axis of the OCT displayed images has been used to examine the structural changes of the macular area even though the images are distorted This helped in detecting the irregular shapes of the posterior pole of the eye such as the DSMs and inferior s taphylomas[23,24]. We found that even slight changes in the structural configuration of the macula were significantly associated with eyes with glaucoma[22]
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