gms | German Medical Science

25th Annual Meeting of the German Retina Society

German Retina Society

01.06. - 02.06.2012, Münster

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Functional relevance of subretinal drusenoid deposits

Meeting Abstract

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  • Florian Alten - Universitäts-Augenklinik Münster
  • P. Heiduschka - Universitäts-Augenklinik Münster
  • C.R. Clemens - Universitäts-Augenklinik Münster
  • N. Eter - Universitäts-Augenklinik Münster

German Retina Society. 25th Annual Conference of the German Retina Society. Münster, 01.-02.06.2012. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2012. Doc12rg31

doi: 10.3205/12rg31, urn:nbn:de:0183-12rg311

This is the English version of the article.
The German version can be found at: http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/rg2012/12rg31.shtml

Published: May 30, 2012

© 2012 Alten et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Purpose: Different studies were able to demonstrate a strong relationship of subretinal drusenoid deposits (SDD) to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and AMD progression. However, the functional relevance of SDD remains unclear. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of SDD on retinal function by mfERG.

Methods: Seventeen eyes of 13 patients with SDD in the posterior pole and no other phenotypic retinal alteration such as conventional drusen, choroidal neovascularization (CNV) or geographic atrophy (GA) were included (6 females, 7 males; age 77.2±5.1 years). Patients underwent fundus photography, spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), fluorescence angiography (FA) and confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (cSLO). mfERG measurements were performed by stimulating the retina by a field of 103 hexagons covering an area of approximately 30°. Both amplitudes and latencies of focal retinal responses obtained at affected and non-affected sites were compared.

Results: In all included eyes, SDD could be clearly demonstrated in SD-OCT, FA and cSLO. Mean BCVA of the studied eyes was 0.86±0.14. In total, mfERG measurements did not show any significant difference in retinal response in the areas where SDD were present compared to non-affected retinal fields.

Conclusions: In contrast to other phenotypic characteristics of AMD, mfERG measurements did not show a definite influence on electrophysiological activity in retinal areas exclusively affected with SDD.