Background and objective: Disorganization of retinal inner layers (DRIL) is a potential spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) imaging biomarker with clinical utility in diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Patients and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at a large academic center. The cohort was composed of 1,175 patients with type 2 diabetes with and without retinopathy on initial examination between September 2009 and January 2019 (n = 2,083 eyes). DR risk and progression factors were obtained from the medical record. Trained graders masked to patients' clinical histories evaluated SD-OCT scans for DRIL.
Results: Of 2,083 eyes, 28.1% (n = 585) demonstrated presence of DRIL with high interrater reliability (K = 0.88, 95% CI 0.86-0.90). DRIL was associated with worse visual acuity (VA) (P < 0.001) and DR severity (P < 0.0001). Insulin users had more severe DR (P < 0.0001). DR-related factors, race (Black, White) and sex (male) were significantly associated with DRIL (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: DRIL was strongly associated with DR severity and worse VA, supporting its utility as an unfavorable prognostic indicator. [Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina 2023;54:692-700.].