No Acute Effect of Smoking on Peripapillary and Macular Vessel Density in Healthy Middle-aged Smokers

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the acute effect of smoking on peripapillary and superficial parafoveal vessel density (VD) in healthy smokers.

Materials and methods: One eye each of 7 healthy smokers (age 40 y and above) was imaged using the Angiovue/RTvue-XR optical coherence tomography after a period of at least 2 hours without smoking (baseline) and 5, 30, and 90 minutes after smoking a cigarette of the brand usually smoked by each participant. In each session, 3 high-quality peripapillary and macular VD scans were acquired. The corresponding measurement results were averaged for each session, respectively.

Results: The participants' age was 45.7±7.1 years; the length of smoking 19.9±10.3 years; and the number of cigarettes per day 15.1±4.0. The image quality scores were high for both peripapillary and macular VD images (medians: 9.0 and 8.7) and did not change during the study (P≥0.196). At baseline peripapillary capillary VD, all-vessels VD and parafoveal VD were 52.4%±2.0%, 58.8%±2.5%, and 49.8%±1.6%, respectively. None of these parameters changed during the study period after smoking (P≥0.276). The relative change from the mean baseline VD values at the 3 timepoints after smoking ranged between -0.45% and 0.42%, -0.37% and 0.47%, and -0.13% and 2.0%, respectively.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that VD values in healthy middle-aged smokers are not influenced either by acute smoking a cigarette or by the time elapsed since the most recent cigarette. This indicates that in long-term investigations for glaucomatous VD progression no control for smoking is needed, at least in the healthy control groups.