Distinguishing Microvasculature Features of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada in Patients in Acute and Convalescent Phases Using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To evaluate retinal and choroidal microvascular features of VKH patients in acute and convalescent phases after treatment using OCTA.

Methods: A prospective, observational study was conducted in patients with initial VKH at the acute stage (n = 15) and healthy participants (n = 15) served as controls. After 3-month systemic corticosteroid treatment, patients’ vascular parameters were recorded by OCTA before and after treatment and compared with results observed in healthy participants.

Results: Our findings first uncovered that there are two types of abnormalities in the choriocapillary layer of patients with VKH in the acute stage: one is characterized as multiple dark spots of choriocapillary flow void and the other involves highly reflective areas surrounded by light spots with an increased flow area. During the convalescent stage, all eyes showed multifocal dark spots in the choriocapillary layer, leading to a reduced choroidal flow area.

Conclusions: OCTA provides a better display of the microvascular appearance of the choroid to noninvasively evaluate choriocapillaris abnormalities in VKH disease.

KEYWORDS:

• Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease
• flow area
• microvasculature
• vessel density
• choriocapillary

Acknowledgments

We thank Liting Zhong and Xiongze Zhang for their contribution to assisting in examining the patients and providing images.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China of Xiaoliang Gan [No. 81571184] and Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou of Wei Chi [No.201804010415].