Functional implications of short-term retinal detachment in porcine eyes: study by multifocal electroretinography

The aim of the study was to determine the type and magnitude of detectable changes in pig multifocal electroretinography (mfERG) induced by the vitreoretinal surgical procedures necessary to gain access to the subretinal space.

Twenty pigs underwent posterior segment surgery. Six animals had a vitrectomy (V), six had in addition a retinal bleb detachment (V + B); five had in addition a retinal diathermia on the bleb (V + B + D) and three received a retinotomy in the diathermized retinal area (V + B + D + R). mfERG evaluation was performed at baseline and 1 and 6 weeks postoperatively. Selected eyes were enucleated for histological evaluation.

The retinal detachments blebs all reattached spontaneously. All four surgical sequences resulted in slight, non-significant changes in the mfERG peaks. A trend towards an amplitude reduction of the mfERG peaks N1, P1 and N2 were observed within the first postoperative week. After 6 weeks, all amplitudes had normalized. Of the implicit times only that of peak N1 (after retinal diathermia) was prolonged significantly at 1 week (P = 0.037). However, it returned to the preoperative level after 6 weeks. Histologically, the retinal detachment bleb was characterized by transient double layering of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and loss photoreceptor outer segments.

Access to the subretinal space in pigs can be gained without permanent detectable changes in the mfERG. A short-term retinal detachment was found to cause only reversible electrophysiological and histological changes in the outer retina, which suggests that this procedure is tolerated well in the porcine retina. The size of the known destructive lesion (retinotomy) was too small to be detected, given the spatial resolution of the mfERG method applied. In the future, the presented protocol can be used to assess the functional outcome of surgery and transplantation in the subretinal space in pigs.