Analysis of retinal and choroidal blood flow density in the macular areas of both eyes of children with mild monocular myopia / 中国医科大学学报

ABSTRACT

Objective To assess retinal and choroidal blood flow density in the macular regions of children diagnosed with unilateral low myopia using optical coherence tomography angiography(OCTA).This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of these mea-surements.Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 90 eyes of 45 children with monocular myopia and adolescents aged 8 to 14 years who visited the outpatient department of the Ophthalmology of Dalian Third People's Hospital between June 2022 and February 2023.Optometry was performed after a 1%cyclopentolate cycloplegic muscle paralysis.Eyes with spherical equivalent(SE)-3.00 D to-0.50 D were included in the myopia group,whereas those with SE-0.25 D to＜+2.00 D were placed in the non-myopia group.The Master system was used to measure axial length(AL)and corneal curvature radius(CR),and to calculate AL/CR.Heidelberg spectral-domain optical coherence tomography(SD-OCT)was used to perform horizontal linear scanning of the macular area to obtain subfoveal choroidal thickness(SFCT).The OCTA module was used to obtain 3 mm×3 mm choroidal blood flow images,which were imported into ImageJ graphics processing software to obtain the blood flow densities of the superficial choroidal plexus(SCP),deep choroidal plexus(DCP),choroidal capillary(CC),and foveal avascular zone(FAZ).Pearson's correlation was used to examine the correlations between each blood flow parameter and age,AL,CR,AL/CR,and SFCT.Results The SE and SFCT of the myopia group were smaller(P＜0.05)than those of the non-myopia group,whereas the AL and AL/CR were significantly larger(P＜0.05)than those of the non-myopia group.The DCP blood flow density in the myopia group was significantly lower than that in the non-myopia group(P＜0.01).There was no statistically sig-nificant difference between the residual blood flow parameters of the myopia and non-myopia groups(P＞0.05).The Pearson's correlation analysis indicated that the SCP and DCP blood flow densities in the myopia group were positively correlated with SE(r= 0.611,0.731,P＜0.05),negatively correlated with AL(r=-0.568,-0.712,P＜0.05),and negatively correlated with AL/CR(r=-0.557,-0.564,P＜0.05).The SCP and DCP blood flow densities were negatively correlated with AL/CR in the non-myopia group(r=-0.615,-0.656,P＜0.05).The CC density and FAZ area in the two groups did not correlate with age,SE,AL,CR,AL/CR,or SFCT(P＞0.05).Conclusion Com-pared to non-myopic eyes,the eyes of children with mild monocular myopia had lower DCP blood flow density.Moreover,retinal blood flow density in myopic eyes was correlated with SE,AL,and AL/CR,whereas retinal blood flow density in non-myopic eyes was only correlated with AL/CR.