gms | German Medical Science

Inflammatory maculopathies represent a serious threat for the vision of patients. Often however it is difficult to detect these changes by funduscopy. Recently, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) wins increasing importance in the diagnostic of central fundus changes. This represents a new diagnostic tool, which performs cross-sectional imaging of the retina and choroid using light waves. Compared to conventional diagnostic techniques such as fluorescein angiography, the advantages are that OCT is not invasive and moreover allows to quantify central fundus changes due to its high tissue resolution of about 10 microns. In this presentation the possibilities of differentiation of various inflammatory maculopathies and monitoring their course, the patterns of inflammatory macular edema as well as the imaging of postinflammatory disorders of the macula using OCT will be demonstrated.