Associations between choroidal thickness, axial length and spherical equivalent in a paediatric population

Abstract

Background:The aim was to compare the choroidal thickness (ChT) of myopic children's eyes with that of emmetropes to determine whether there are associations between ChT, axial length and spherical equivalent (SE) in a paediatric population. Methods: A total of 117 eyes of 117 children including 53 myopic eyes (myopic group) and 64 emmetropic eyes (emmetropic group) were enrolled in this cross-sectional comparative study. ChT was analysed by using the HD 5 Line Raster scan protocol of spectral domain enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography. Subfoveal ChT was measured manually as the distance between the retinal pigment epithelium and the chorioscleral border and three additional measurements were carried out every 750 μm temporal (T1, T2 and T3) and nasal (N1, N2 and N3) to the fovea. Results: The mean age was 11.7 ± 2.7 years (range five to 17 years) in the myopic group and 10.9 ± 3.4 years (range 5 to 17 years) in the emmetropic group. There were no significant differences between the groups concerning age and sex (both p > 0.05). The myopic eyes had significantly thinner subfoveal, T1, T2, T3, N1, N2, N3 and average choroid than the emmetropic eyes (all p < 0.05). In addition, correlation analyses among all the study subjects showed that all subfoveal, T1, T2, T3, N1, N2, N3 and average ChT had negative correlations with axial length and positive correlations with the SE. Conclusion: The present study showed that the myopic children's eyes had significantly thinner subfoveal choroid than the emmetropic control eyes. Further, ChT was negatively correlated with axial length and positively correlated with SE in the population that included myopic and emmetropic children.

Does the treatment of amblyopia normalise subfoveal choroidal thickness in amblyopic children?

“…To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that the recovery of amblyopia had no significant effect on choroidal thickness. In our study, as in previous studies, choroidal thickness was significantly correlated with axial length. Therefore, it can be stated that the thickening of the choroid that has been found previously in the eyes with hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia may be an artefact of the correlation between choroidal thickness and hyperopia.…”

“…In addition, Mori and colleagues speculated that choroidal accommodation might be inhibited with the diminutive visual feedback in the amblyopic eye; however, in all of these studies, amblyopic eyes were more hyperopic than the control eyes and it was not clear whether this choroidal thickening resulted from amblyopia or hyperopia. It has been demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between SE and choroidal thickness and a negative correlation between axial length and choroidal thickness . To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that the recovery of amblyopia had no significant effect on choroidal thickness.…”

“…Several experimental studies imposed myopic or hyperopic defocus in some animal species and found that to maintain image clarity, these animals rapidly changed their choroidal thickness to adjust the retinal position . Hyperopic defocus forced by negative lenses caused considerably increased ocular elongation and a slight choroidal thinning, while myopic defocus forced by positive lenses caused a dramatic choroidal thickening, which pushed the retina forward toward the image plane and a slight decrease in ocular elongation; however, clinical studies have demonstrated that the choroid is thicker in more hyperopic subjects and is thinner in more myopic subjects . Read and colleagues compared choroidal thickness of myopic and non‐myopic children's eyes and found that myopic children's eyes had thinner choroids compared to non‐myopic children's eyes.…”

Choroidal Thickness and Ametropia in Children: A Longitudinal Study

“…Similar studies carried out on children have also revealed an inverse correlation between ChT and axial length (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23).…”

Subfoveal Choroidal Thickness in Myopia: An OCT-Based Study in Young Chinese Patients

“…e most common application of EDI-OCT in the analysis of refractive error is the detection of significantly decreased choroidal thickness (ChT) in patients with myopia [4,[14][15][16] in both the stromal and vascular components [17]. ChT has been associated with age [4,15,16,18], refractive error [7,17,[19][20][21][22][23], axial length (AL) [15,16,18,[20][21][22][24][25][26], and sex [16,18,[23][24][25][26], in both adults and children with conflicting results.…”