The relationship between the visual prognoses of branch retinal artery obstruction and foveal thickness on OCT.

Purpose: To determine the correlation between the prognosis of branch retinal artery obstruction (BRAO) and the foveal thickness or outer nuclear layer (ONL) thickness on optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Methods: Twenty-one eyes (21 patients) in patients with resolved, non-complicated BRAO and a normal control of 10 eyes (10 volunteers) were used in this study. The average macular thickness, foveal thickness and ONL thickness at central fovea were measured in both the patients and the control group using spectral domain OCT. The thickness between the patient group and the control group were compared and correlation between the best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and each thickness was determined.

Results: The average age of the patients was 52 ± 5.8 years. The average macular thickness, foveal thickness and ONL thickness at the central fovea of the patients were significantly (p < 0.001, p = 0.023, p = 0.021, respectively) thinner than that of the control group. Both the foveal thickness (r(s) = 0.56, p = 0.008) and ONL thickness (r(s) = 0.86, p < 0.001) were significantly correlated with BCVA. There was no significant correlation between the average macular thickness and BCVA.

Conclusions: The foveal thickness and ONL thickness at the fovea was positively correlated with the BCVA in patients with resolved BRAO.