[Observational study on peripapillary hyper-reflective ovoid mass-like structures in children and adolescents with...

Objective: To investigate the correlation of peripapillary hyper-reflective ovoid mass-like structures (PHOMS) in children and adolescents with myopia and its correlation factors. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. From September 2021 to January 2022, myopic children and adolescents aged 6-16 years treated in Wuhan Central Hospital and Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University with a myopic spherical equivalent (SE) ≥0.5 D were consecutively included. All patients underwent best corrected visual acuity, refraction, intraocular pressure, slit lamp microscope, axial length, fundus photography and enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT) examination. EDI-OCT optic disc parameter measurements included diameter, degree of tilt and shift and PHOMS height. The patients were divided into PHOMS group and non-PHOMS group according to the presence or absence of PHOMS. According to the height of PHOMS, the patients were further divided into 3 subgroups: large (>400 μm), medium (200-400 μm) and small (<200 μm). The optic disc characteristics of the PHOMS group and the non-PHOMS group and each subgroup were observed, and the correlation factors of PHOMS were analyzed. Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, chi-square test, Logistic regression analysis and Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient were used. Results: A total of 108 patients (108 eyes) were included, including 46 males (46 eyes) and 62 females (62 eyes). There were 70 eyes (64.8%) in the PHOMS group and 38 eyes (35.2%) in the non-PHOMS group. Small PHOMS can only be detected by EDI-OCT, while medium to large PHOMS showed blurred optic disc boundaries on fundoscopy images. Univariate Logistic regression analysis showed that PHOMS was associated with age (OR=1.36, 95%CI: 1.13-1.65, P=0.001) and myopic SE (OR=4.57, 95%CI: 2.51-8.32, P<0.001), axial length (OR=2.28, 95%CI: 1.37-3.82, P=0.002), optic disc tilt (OR=3.44, 95%CI: 2.09-5.66, P<0.001), optic disc shift (OR=0.95, 95%CI: 0.93-0.98, P<0.001) and optic disc diameter (OR=0.75, 95%CI: 0.58-0.95, P=0.019). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that the higher the myopic SE (OR=3.01, 95%CI: 1.27-7.17, P=0.013) and the greater the tilt of the optic disc (OR=4.06,95%CI:1.99-8.29,P<0.001), the higher the risk of PHOMS. Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient analysis showed that the height of PHOMS was negatively correlated with optic disc shift (r=-0.31, P<0.001). Conclusions: PHOMS can be found in a subset of myopic children. The fundus manifestations of PHOMS of different heights are slightly different. The large myopic SE and great optic disc tilt are risk factors of PHOMS, and their magnitudes correlate with the border tissue angle.