Abstract
Purpose: Fluorescein angiography with Optos® 200Tx is useful to visualize the microcirculations of peripheral retina. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feature of the patients with peripheral type of diabetic retinopathy (DR) diagnosed by using Ultra-wide field FA (UWFA) with Optos® 200Tx.
Methods: The UWFA was performed on 154 eyes of 77 patients with DR (62 male, 15 female, average age : 60.2 years). Fifteen eyes (9.7%) were found to have the capillary non-perfusion area only in the far-periphery without any evidences of non-perfusion in the posterior pole and the mid-periphery. Eight eyes of 6 patients were non-treated cases with peripheral type of DR (4 male, 12 female, average age : 66.3 years). We evaluated the FA findings, HbA1c and disease duration of these patients with peripheral type of DR.
Results: All of the non-treated patients with peripheral type of DR have been having diabetes for more than 20 years (average of 26.2 years). The control of blood sugar was poor (HbA1c 6.7˜10.1%, average 8.1%). One of these cases, whose blood sugar was good (HbA1c 6.7%), had diabetes for as long as 40 years. It was reported that most cases of peripheral type of DR progress slowly. However, we experienced a case that represented vitreous hemorrhage caused by retinal neovascularization existed in only periphery.
Conclusions: Peripheral type of DR was considered to progress slowly. Most of them were found in elder patients. It is not rare to see the cases in which peripheral capillary occlusion exist even though posterior pole is intact, especially in the patients with long history of diabetes.
