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[Retinal thickness and changes with age]
Kaname Kanai1, Tomoatsu Abe, Koichiro Murayama
1Department of Ophthalmology, Saitama Medical School, 38 Morohongo, Moroyama-machi, Iruma-gun, Saitama 350-0495, Japan.
Purpose:
We studied the morphological changes occurring with aging in the macula using optical coherence tomography(OCT).
Methods:
Forty-seven eyes from 47 normal volunteers were studied. The subjects ranged in age from 21 to 79 years and their refractive errors were within +/- 3.00 diopters. The measurement of the retinal thickness was done by OCT. The retinal thickness was evaluated at five points: the foveola, and 1 mm superior, inferior, nasal, and temporal to the foveola. The axial length of the eye and the refraction were also measured in all subjects.
Results:
The retinal thickness was 142 +/- 15 microns at the foveola, 257 +/- 18 microns at the superior point, 255 +/- 18 microns at the inferior point, 246 +/- 20 microns at the temporal point, and 261 +/- 21 microns at the nasal point (mean +/- standard deviation). All points except the foveola showed reduced retinal thickness with age. Thus, attenuation of the retinal thickness in the parafoveal area was correlated significantly with age. However, no change in the retinal thickness at the foveola was observed with increasing age. Neither axial length nor refractive error biased this result.
Conclusion:
Our results demonstrated that the macular thickness changes with aging, but no obvious change could be detected in the foveola.