Quantitative Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Detects Retinal Perfusion Changes in Carotid Artery Stenosis

Luisa Pierro; Alessandro Arrigo; Michele De Crescenzo; Emanuela Aragona; Roberto Chiesa; Renata Castellano; Barbara Catenaccio; Francesco Bandello

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.640666

Quantitative Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Detects Retinal Perfusion Changes in Carotid Artery Stenosis

Front Neurosci. 2021 Apr 22:15:640666. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.640666. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Luisa Pierro¹, Alessandro Arrigo¹, Michele De Crescenzo¹, Emanuela Aragona¹, Roberto Chiesa², Renata Castellano², Barbara Catenaccio², Francesco Bandello¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ophthalmology, Scientific Institute San Raffaele Hospital, University Vita-Salute, Milan, Italy.
² Department of Surgery, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy.

Abstract

Background: Carotid artery stenosis (CAS) is a multifaceted disease characterized by possible ocular involvement. Treatment with carotid endarterectomy helps to restore cerebral perfusion, which may prevent ocular and cerebral complications. The main aim was to assess retinal and choroidal vascular perfusion changes before and after endarterectomy in patients affected by CAS.

Methods: The design of the study was prospective and observational, including patients affected by CAS and healthy controls. The follow-up was 3 months. We performed quantitative optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography (OCTA) analyses of retinal perfusion changes, before and after endarterectomy. The main outcome measures were the quantitative changes of choroidal thickness (CT), retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), and ganglion cell layer (GCL); vessel density (VD); and vessel tortuosity (VT) OCTA metrics were also measured.

Results: Sixty eyes of 30 patients affected by CAS and 30 eyes of 30 controls were included. We separately considered the ipsilateral eyes to CAS, the contralateral eyes to CAS, and the healthy eyes. Visual symptoms were absent in all the patients. RNFL and GCL resulted similar between patients and controls (p > 0.05). CT was significantly thinner in ipsilateral eyes than controls (p < 0.01), and it resulted unchanged after surgery (p > 0.05). VD resulted significantly altered only in some plexa of the ipsilateral eyes (p < 0.01), whereas VT disclosed decreased values of the entire retinal vascular network, both in ipsilateral and contralateral eyes (p < 0.05). Endarterectomy was followed by statistically significant improvement of retinal perfusion (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: Optical coherence tomography angiography can noninvasively detect postendarterectomy retinal perfusion improvements in CAS patients with baseline diabetes and hypertension as a systemic risk factor.

Keywords: Carotid artery stenosis (CAS); Endarterectomy; OCT; OCTA; Retina.