Purpose: We explored the retinal microvascular changes in carotid artery stenosis (CAS) and their relationship with carotid plaque morphology.
Methods: All participants were diagnosed with carotid artery stenosis by a neurologist. Participants underwent digital subtraction angiography (DSA) and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) imaging. The degree and length of carotid plaque were obtained from the DSA tool. OCTA tool measured the densities in the superficial vascular complex (SVC) and deep vascular complex (DVC).
Results: One hundred seventeen patients with CAS patients were included in our data analysis. Eyes with ipsilateral stenosis had reduced retinal microvascular densities when compared to contralateral eyes in patients with CAS (P = 0.016 for SVC, and P = 0.004 for DVC). Microvascular densities correlated with the length of carotid plaque (P = 0.015 for SVC, and P = 0.022 for DVC) in our CAS cohort, although they did not correlate with the degree of carotid plaque (P = 0.264 for SVC, and P = 0.298 for DVC). However, when stratified into moderate and severe subgroups, the degree of carotid plaque correlated with microvascular densities in patients with severe stenosis (P = 0.045 for SVC, and P = 0.038 for DVC).
Conclusions: Our study suggests that OCTA can noninvasively detect retinal microvascular changes in patients with CAS and that these changes correlated with the length of the stenosis, but future studies are required to confirm these findings.
Translational relevance: Noninvasive and rapid acquisition of the OCTA image might have the potential to be used as a screening tool to detect microvascular changes in carotid artery stenosis.