2006 Volume 57 Issue 2-4 Pages 65-70
Purpose: To report the clinical significance of ankle-brachial index (ABI) and pulse wave velocity (PWV)
in retinal vascular occlusion.
Method: We measured the ABI and PWV, which are used as clinical indicators of arteriosclerosis, of 106 patients
with retinal vascular occlusion (RVO) as well as hypertensive retinopathy (HR) and diabetic retinopathy (DR), and
100 age-matched healthy control subjects.
Results: ABI decreased with advancing age in patients with RVO, whereas no age-related changes were observed
in non-RVO patients and control subjects. Furthermore, ABI was significantly lower in patients having combined
presence of HR, DR and RVO than it was in patients with either HR, DR, RVO, HR+DR, HR+RVO or DR+RVO.
Five out of six patients with abnormally low ABI values (less than 0.9) had associated central retinal artery
occlusion (CRAO). In contrast, no such associations were observed in PWV among the groups.
Conclusion: Our present data provide the first evidence that measurement of ABI may be a clinical marker for
management for retinal vascular occlusion, especially for CRAO.