Retinal Vascular Patterns in the Macula and the Perimacular Area in Premature and Full-Term Infants

Abstract

27 eyes of 20 premature and full-term infants were subjected to trypsin digestion, and a study was made of the extension of the temporal retinal vessels and of the formation of the radial peripapillary capillaries (RPCs) and the capillary-free zone in the macula. The advancing borders of the temporal retinal vessels exhibited a V-shaped appear-rance in cases of 23–29 weeks in gestational age. The RPCs were observed in cases after the 27th week of gestation. The capillary-free zone in the macula was observed in cases after the 25th week of gestation. There were two eyes having extremely small and incomplete capillary-free zones: in one eye a vascular network was present in the region corresponding to the center of the macula. It was thought that the vascular network in the temporal horizontal aspect of the macula is formed by anastomosis of the superior and inferior temporal vessels, and that the capillary-free zone in the macula develops secondarily as the result of retraction of the capillaries.

Foveal avascular zone in macular branch retinal vein occlusion

“…FAZ in normal subjects was studied by means of retinal tripsin-digest [16], entoptic techniques [17] and fluorescein angiography. FAZ enlargement represents a well-known feature in diabetic retinopathy reported by Bresnick [4], Leite [5], Arend [6] and Mansour [7].…”

Vascular endothelial growth factor in eye disease

“…Several studies have also examined the process in the human fetal retina (Michaelson, 1948;Nilausen, 1958;Cogan, 1963;Ashton, 1970;Nishimura and Taniguchi, 1982;Penfold et al, 1990;Gariano et al, 1994;Hughes et al, 2000). Development of the retinal vasculature follows a common pattern in all species (Dorrell and Friedlander, 2006), but there are some dissimilarities as well (Ashton, 1968;Gariano et al, 1994).…”

Foveal Avascular Zone in Idiopathic Juxtafoveolar Telangiectasia

“…FAZ in normal subjects have been ana lyzed by retinal trypsin digest [9], entoptic vi sualization [10,11] and fluorescein angiogra phy. The mean FAZ diameter was determined to be 0.56 mm by the trypsin digestion method [9], and 0.25 mm [10] or 2.04° [11] by entoptic methods.…”

“…The mean FAZ diameter was determined to be 0.56 mm by the trypsin digestion method [9], and 0.25 mm [10] or 2.04° [11] by entoptic methods. Using fluorescein angiography, the mean FAZ diameter was (in disk diameter) 0.32 [1], 0.34 [12], (in mm) 0.20 [10], 0.53 [13], 0.61 [4,13], 0.73 [3], while the mean FAZ area was 0.231 [14] and 0.35 mm2 [3].…”

“…If this theo ry holds true, a small FAZ such as in IJFT and retinopathy of prematurity [1] would probably results from an altered development of capil lary retraction. The temporal predilection in IJFT may be attributed to the observation that temporal macular vessels lag behind the re maining macular vessels in development [9],…”