Abstract
Objective To investigate the thicknesses of macular inner retinal layers in children with anisometropic amblyopia using spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Methods Thirty-seven children with anisometropic amblyopia and fifty-seven children with normal vision were recruited in the study. Both eyes of children with anisometropic amblyopia and the right eyes of normal controls underwent scanning with the Spectralis OCT. The segmentation of retinal layers was performed automatically to measure individual inner retinal layers in the five sectors of the macular. An independent sample t-test was applied to compare the mean layer thicknesses of anisometropic eyes and fellow eyes with those of control eyes. Results There was no significant difference in the total macular thickness between amblyopic and control eyes. However, in the peripheral macular area, three of the four quadrants of both the ganglion cell layer (GCL) and the inner plexiform layer (IPL) thicknesses were significantly reduced in amblyopic eyes compared to control eyes. Moreover, two of the four quadrants of the GCL thickness and three of the four quadrants of the IPL thickness in the peripheral macular area were significantly reduced in fellow eyes than in control eyes. Conclusion The SD-OCT data revealed differences in the thicknesses of some macular inner retinal layers in both eyes of children with anisometropic amblyopia compared with those with emmetropia, indicating that structural changes might exist in the retina of children with amblyopia.
Highlights
Amblyopia is one of the most common visual disorders in children [1]
There was a significant difference in the refractive error between amblyopic and control eyes (p < 0:01), as well as the difference between amblyopic and fellow eyes (p < 0:01)
Both amblyopic and fellow eyes had no significant difference in the axial length of control eyes (p = 0:08 and 0.12)
Summary
Amblyopia is one of the most common visual disorders in children [1]. The main causes include strabismus, anisometropia, or an obstruction along the visual axis. In the study of the pathogenesis of amblyopia, it was concluded that amblyopia is a developmental disorder which includes a pathophysiological change from retinal ganglion cells to the visual cortex. There are two central [2, 3] and peripheral [4, 5] theories in this regard. Animal experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging have confirmed the presence of histological changes in the hypothalamus in patients with amblyopia [2, 6]. Because of technological limitations of assessment, the change of retinal structure is still controversial
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