[Diagnosis and follow-up of non-diabetic macular edema with optical coherence tomography (OCT)]

Objective and quantitative follow-up of macular edema with present clinical methods is limited. We studied to what extent optical coherence tomography (OCT) may be clinically useful in diagnosis and follow-up of non-diabetic macular edema.

We evaluated 106 eyes with non-diabetic macular edema retrospectively considering diagnosis, foveal retinal thickness in OCT, fluorescein angiographic findings and visual acuity.

In 60 of 61 eyes (98%) the diagnosis of macular edema was confirmed by fluorescein angiography. There was only a minor correlation between visual acuity and foveal retinal thickness (r=0.32, p=0.001). Follow-up of 24 eyes showed a statistically significant decrease of foveal retinal thickness under therapy from 420+/-165 microm to 354+/-165 microm (p=0,035) as well as a small improvement in visual acuity from 0.30 to 0.38 (p=0.025).

OCT can diagnose macular edema non-invasively and thus may replace fluorescein angiography as an invasive method. The reduction of macular edema in the course of therapeutic measures can be documented objectively with OCT.