The Vitreous in Uveitis: Characterizing the Invisible with Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

Purpose: The current gold standard to grade vitreous inflammation is the Nussenblatt scale based in clinical examination, published in 1985. Nowadays a big effort is undergoing to come out with more objective and reliable methods based in optical coherence (OCT) imaging analysis.

Methods: A systematic review was done to identify the articles that quantify or assess qualitatively vitreous inflammation with OCT.

Results: Twelve papers were included. Only one paper analyzed qualitatively the anatomy of the vitreous body and its potential influence in cystoid macular edema, while the rest assessed vitreous inflammation quantitatively using the relative reflectivity of the vitreous body with different retinal structures or quantifying the hyperreflective dots in the vitreous.

Conclusion: The new development of OCT-based scales for measuring vitreous inflammation could replace the current clinical grading scales as an end point for future clinical trials.

Keywords: OCT; VIT/RPE; uveitis; vitreous haze; vitritis.