Choroidal Microvascular Alterations in COVID-19 Patients

ABSTRACT

Objective

To evaluate alterations in the choroidal angioarchitecture of COVID-19 patients using optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) based surrogate markers.

Methods

This prospective case-control study recruited 56 COVID-19 patients (111 eyes) and 61 healthy individuals (120 eyes). Choroidal thickness (CT) and Choroidal vascularity index (CVI) were derived from OCT images using a purpose-built automated software for choroidal image segmentation. A linear mixed model with age and gender as covariates was employed to compare CVI and CT between groups.

Results

COVID-19 patients had significantly higher subfoveal (81.3um vs 86.8um, p = .02), temporal (78.8um vs 84.3um, p = .005), nasal (87.5um vs 95.1um, p = .001) and average CT (82.5um vs 88.7um, p = .001). COVID-19 patients had significantly lower subfoveal (64.0 vs 63.5, p = .02) and average CVI (63.5 vs 63.1, p = .02).

Conclusion

COVID-19 results in significantly thicker choroid with reduced relative vascularity. This may be attributable to increased vascular permeability secondary to inflammation, resulting in choroidal stromal edema.

KEYWORDS:

• Choroid
• COVID-19
• vascularity
• choroidal index
• Vascularity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the unconditional support of Dr Sonam Solanki and Dr Chandan Chaudhari, Masina Hospital, Mumbai, for the recruitment of their patients with COVID-19 infection. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Zeiss in providing the optical coherence tomography (OCT) system for the purpose of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.