Do Optic Discs get “Thinner” or “Narrower?”

Abstract

Accurate phenotyping is an essential part of patient care, research, and training. "Thinning" is currently used more commonly than "narrowing" in the literature to describe progressive loss of the neuroretinal rim in a radial axis. It would be appropriate to use "narrowing" for radial loss or decrease in width and "thinning" for decrease in the thickness of the rim.

Re: Jiang et al.: Optic nerve head changes after short-term intraocular pressure elevation in acute primary angle-closure suspects (Ophthalmology 2015;122:730-7)

“…REPLY: We thank Professor Spaeth for his interest in our study and we fully agree with his comments on the plasticity of the optic nerve head as shown by the width of the neuroretinal rim of the optic nerve head getting narrower in response to a short-term increase in intraocular pressure. 1,2 We also fully agree on the terminology he recommends, using the term narrowing for a decrease in the neuroretinal rim width in radial direction, and of using the term thinning for a decrease in the thickness of the rim as measured in sagittal direction. As recommended by Spaeth and as not described in our previous manuscript, we had repeated the optical coherent tomographic evaluation of the optic nerve head for 9 eyes 1 day after the dark room prone provocative test, when the intraocular pressure had returned to normal values.…”