Tomographic Findings in the Retina of Unvaccinated Patients with COVID Pneumonia: Prospective Longitudinal Study.

There is no definitive evidence on the extent of SARS-CoV-2's effect on the retina. This study aims to determine if the natural history of SARS-CoV-2 infection affects tomographic findings in the retina of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. This is a prospective cohort study of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia. The patients underwent ophthalmological explorations and optical coherence tomography during the acute phase of the infection and at a follow-up 12 weeks later. The primary outcomes were the central retinal thickness and central choroidal thickness, which were compared longitudinally and with non-COVID-19 historical controls. No statistically relevant differences were observed in the longitudinal analysis of the thickness of the central retina (p = 0.056), central choroid (p = 0.99), retinal nerve fiber layer (p = 0.21), or ganglion cell layer (p = 0.32). Patients with acute COVID-19 pneumonia showed significantly greater central retinal thickness than non-COVID controls (p = 0.006). In conclusion, tomographic measures of the retina and choroid are not influenced by the phase of COVID-19 infection and remain stable during 12 weeks. The central retinal thickness may increase in the acute phase of COVID-19 pneumonia, but more epidemiological studies using optical coherence tomography in the early stages of the disease are needed.

Intraobserver Repeatability of Tomographic, Pachymetric, and Anatomical Measurements in Healthy Eyes Using a New Swept-Source Optical Coherence Topographer.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the intraobserver repeatability of several corneal parameters in healthy eyes using a new swept-source optical coherence topographer. METHODS: Fifty right eyes of 50 subjects were enrolled in this study. A single examiner performed 3 consecutive measurements using the Anterion swept-source optical coherence tomography. The following corneal parameters were evaluated: average keratometry (K), steep K, flat K, astigmatism, best fit sphere, and maximum keratometry on the anterior and posterior surfaces at 3 mm, average K, steep K, flat K, and astigmatism in the total corneal power map at 3 mm, central corneal thickness and thinnest point thickness in the pachymetric map, and corneal diameter. To assess the repeatability of the measurements, we calculated the following indexes: intrasubject SD (Sw), coefficient of variation, coefficient of repeatability, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). RESULTS: High repeatability was reported for all the evaluated corneal parameters, with Sw values lower than 0.027, coefficient of variation values lower than 0.066%, and coefficient of repeatability values lower than 0.187. ICC values showed a high correlation between measurements in all cases, being the lowest value for the astigmatism of the anterior surface (ICC = 0.92); for the rest, ICC values were larger than 0.98. Finally, we have not found statistically significant differences between repeated measurements (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The anterior segment measurements provided by the Anterion swept-source optical coherence tomography device show high intraobserver repeatability in healthy eyes.