The prevalence of macular drusen in postmortem eyes

In a histologic study of 46 eyes from 23 consecutive autopsy cases (mean age, 67 years; range, 36 to 94 years) with no previously documented ocular disease, drusen were identified in the macula of 87% (40 of 46 eyes), with hard drusen in 83% (38 of 46 eyes) and soft drusen in 39% (18 of 46 eyes). Soft drusen were found without hard drusen in two maculas. In 14 of the 16 eyes that contained both hard and soft drusen, the hard drusen outnumbered the soft drusen. The number of macular drusen in the right eye generally approximated that in the left eye for both hard drusen (r = 0.959; P less than .001) and soft drusen (r = 0.754; P less than .001). There was no correlation (t = 0.538; P greater than .05) between the number of hard drusen and increasing age. However, there was a significant correlation (t = 2.54; P less than .02) between the number of soft drusen and increasing age.