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Updated: Oct 3, 2025
Retinal Vascular Reactivity as Assessed by Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography
Published on: March 26, 2020
Evaluation of the effect of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome on retinal microvascularity by optical coherence
Sedat Ava1, Seyfettin Erdem1, Mine Karahan1
1Department Ophthalmology, Dicle University Medical Faculty, Diyarbakır 21280, Turkey.
Purpose:
Using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), we sought to determine whether there are retinal microvascular changes in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS).
Method:
The study included 56 patients diagnosed with OSAS by polysomnography [21 patients with mild OSAS (group 1), 14 with moderate OSAS (group 2) and 21 with severe OSAS (group 3)], and 26 healthy individuals as a control group (group 4). The vascular densities of the superficial capillary plexus and deep capillary plexus of the retinal segmentations, together with the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) width, were measured for all participants, using OCTA.
Result:
Compared with the control group, vascular densitiy in whole image of superficial capillary plexus were found to be significantly lower in group 2. In addition, vascular densitiy in fovea region of superficial capillary plexus was significantly lower in group 1 than the control group. In deep capillary plexus, vascular densitiy of whole image, superior hemi and nasal regions were found to be significantly lower in group 2 and group 3 compared with the control group. Parafoveal region in group 3 had significantly lower vascular densities than the controls. A significantly larger FAZ was also found in group 1 and group 3 in the deep capillary plexus, compared with the controls.
Conclusion:
We detected smaller vascular densities in both the superficial capillary plexus and deep capillary plexus and a larger deep capillary plexus FAZ in OSAS patients. Therefore, OCTA may be useful as a non-invasive method to understand the systemic effects of OSAS.
