Comparison of choroidal thickness of patients having intermediate, posterior and panuveitis with healthy control group via using EDI-OCT

This study aims to compare the choroidal thickness of patients having intermediate, posterior and panuveitis with choroidal thickness of healthy control group via using Enhanced Depth Imaging Optical Coherence Tomography (EDI-OCT). For this purpose, 179 eyes of 95 patients and 84 eyes of 42 healthy controls were enrolled in this study retrospectively. Patients were first divided by their etiology as idiopatic panuveitis, Behçet Disease (BD), sarcoidosis, Vogt Koyanagi Harada (VKH), pars planitis and toksoplasmosis, and then compared with control group. Total number 50 patients having BD was also divided into 3 groups as 13 active, 31 inactive and 6 terminal phase patients. The choroid thickness was measured vertically from the outer border of the retinal pigment epithelium to the inner scleral border. These measurements' starting point was at subfoveal choroid and the other points were selected 500 μm intervals from the fovea to 3000μm nasal and to 3000μm temporal, making up to total number of 13 measurement points. Negative correlation has been identified between choroidal thickness and age in all groups except VKH group (p<0.05). There was no correlation between choroidal thickness and visual acuity in any group except BH group that having positive correlation at all 13 points (p<0.05). Negative correlation was observed between disease duration and choroidal thickness in all groups for all 13 points (p<0.05) except VKH group who had negative correlation for the points located nasal to fovea. Inactive phase choroidal thickness values measured from 13 points for all groups, except BD and VKH groups, were lower than the controls' choroidal thicknesses (p<0.05). In BD group, which had ranked to active, inactive and terminal phases, the choroidal thickness was the highest at the active phase and the lowest at the terminal phase with both are statistically significant. However, there was not statistically significant difference between inactive phase BD with healthy controls. Statistically significant difference was not concluded between choroidal thicknesses of inactive phase VKH patients with of control group. As this study supports, the knowledge of choroidal thickness gained via EDI-OKT can be utilized in explaining of the uveitis pathogenesis and specific treatment follow up.