Comparison of Choroidal Thickness in Affected and Fellow Eyes of Treatment-Naive Retinal Vein Occlusion Patients

Arnab Garai; Ramanuj Samanta; Sanjeev K Mittal; Ranjeeta Kumari; Sreeram Jayaraj; Neeti Gupta

doi:10.7759/cureus.85119

Comparison of Choroidal Thickness in Affected and Fellow Eyes of Treatment-Naive Retinal Vein Occlusion Patients

Cureus. 2025 May 31;17(5):e85119. doi: 10.7759/cureus.85119. eCollection 2025 May.

Authors

Arnab Garai¹, Ramanuj Samanta¹, Sanjeev K Mittal¹, Ranjeeta Kumari², Sreeram Jayaraj^{3

1}, Neeti Gupta¹

Affiliations

¹ Ophthalmology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Rishikesh, IND.
² Community and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Rishikesh, IND.
³ Ophthalmology, Shri Guru Ram Rai Institute of Medical and Health Sciences, Dehradun, IND.

Abstract

Purpose: The primary purpose of the study was to compare the baseline choroidal thickness (CT) between affected eyes and fellow eyes of treatment-naive retinal vein occlusion (RVO) patients by spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). The secondary purpose of the study was to find any association between presenting visual acuity and CT in the affected eyes of treatment-naive RVO patients.

Methods: This was a comparative, cross-sectional study. A total of 68 eyes of 34 treatment-naive RVO patients in the age group of 40-60 years were prospectively included in the study. Individuals with refractive error beyond ±6 D and posterior segment pathology other than RVO were excluded. The baseline axial length and intraocular pressure of the affected and fellow eyes were taken into consideration so that these parameters do not have any effect on the CT. The CT at the subfoveal region, at a distance of 500 µm nasal and 500 µm temporal to the fovea, was measured on SD-OCT with enhanced depth imaging (EDI) mode.

Results: The CT at all locations was significantly higher in the affected eyes of RVO patients (sub-foveal, 500 µm nasal, 500 µm temporal, and mean CT: 326.1 ± 80.0 µm, 325.4 ± 99.7 µm, 328.1 ± 100.8 µm, and 326.5 ± 87.8 µm, respectively) compared to the fellow eyes (sub-foveal, 500 µm nasal, 500 µm temporal, and mean CT: 264.2 ± 69.2 µm, 263.1 ± 69.5 µm, 255.2 ± 72.6 µm, and 260.8 ± 68.5 µm, respectively). The presenting visual acuity (in LogMAR) did not show a statistically significant correlation with CT (p = 0.404).

Conclusion: The study demonstrated that although CT was increased in RVO patients, it did not have any significant association with presenting visual acuity in the affected eyes of RVO patients.

Keywords: branch retinal vein occlusion; central retinal vein occlusion (crvo); choroidal thickness; enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography; retinal venous occlusion; spectral domain optical coherent tomography.