OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY ANGIOGRAPHY FEATURES OF SUBRETINAL FIBROSIS AFTER MYOPIC NEOVASCULARIZATION

Abstract

Purpose: To describe the optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography features of subretinal fibrosis in eyes with myopic choroidal neovascularization after natural evolution or secondary to intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy.

Methods: Retrospective observational case series. All eyes underwent a multimodal imaging examination including fluorescein angiography, spectral domain OCT, OCT angiography, and en face OCT.

Results: Twenty-five eyes of 25 patients with mean age of 56.4 ± 14.9 were included in the study. Subretinal fibrosis was diagnosed at mean 30 (range 6-116) months before inclusion. Within the subretinal fibrosis, an abnormal vascular network was observed in 20/25 (80%) eyes, located typically in the outer retina (18/20, 90%) or the choriocapillaris (14/20, 70%) segmentation. The most prevalent patterns were "round tangle" and "tapered tangle." On en face OCT, the subretinal fibrosis was evidenced in 24/25 (96%) eyes, most prevalently in the outer retina (21/25, 84%) and in the choriocapillaris (18/25, 72%), where main feature was white-hyperreflective (20/21, 95%) and dark-hyporeflective (17/18, 94%) appearance, respectively. The presence of subretinal fibrosis on en face OCT was positively correlated with the presence of abnormal vascular network on OCT angiography in 61% of the cases (P = 0.005).

Conclusion: Subretinal fibrosis secondary to myopic choroidal neovascularization frequently contains blood flow within a persistent abnormal vascular network as assessed by OCT angiography.