[Significance of optic disc topography and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness measurement by spectral-domain OCT in diagnosis of glaucoma].

OBJECTIVE: To study the significance of optic disc tomography and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness measurement by spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the diagnosis of glaucoma.

METHODS: It was a noninterventional, observational study. The optic disc topographic parameters and total and regional RNFL thickness were measured by RTVue OCT in 60 normal eyes and 97 glaucomatous eyes. One-way analysis of variance was used to compare the parameters above mentioned between normal and glaucomatous groups. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and the sensitivity at 80% specificity were used to assess the ability of each testing parameter in the differentiation between normal and glaucoma eyes.

RESULTS: There were statistically significant differences in all RTVue OCT measurement parameters (F = 1.024, P = 0.596;F = 36.519, 54.464, 27.659, 36.176, 20.562, 63.833, 30.031, 54.652, 98.146, 78.705, 99.839, 43.728, 75.720, 45.709, 39.380, 33.590, 66.887, 78.335, 45.485;P = 0.000) except disc area. The average RNFL thickness in normal, early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes was 109.950, 93.313, 80.374 and 65.570 µm, respectively. Among the eight regions around the optic disc, the thickest RNFL was located at the inferotemporal (150.066 µm) and superotemporal (146.285 µm) regions in normal eyes, and the superotemporal (108.569, 103.420 and 88.708 µm in early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes, respectively) and inferotemporal (108.201, 102.830 and 86.369 µm in early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes, respectively) regions in glaucomatous eyes. Both in normal and glaucomatous eyes, the thinnest RNFL was located at the nasal and temporal regions, respectively. For optic disc topographic parameters, the highest AUC was vertical cup/disc ratio (AUC = 0.762, 0.946 and 0.988 in early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes, respectively), and the sensitivity at 80% specificity was 62.2%, 76.5% and 99.2% in early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes, respectively. For RNFL thickness, the highest AUC was superotemporal region RNFL thickness (AUC = 0.915) and the sensitivity at 80% specificity was 89.5% in early glaucomatous eyes. The highest AUC was inferior average RNFL thickness (AUC = 0.967) and the sensitivity at 80% specificity was 94.1% in moderate glaucomatous eyes. The highest AUC was average RNFL thickness (AUC = 0.985) and the sensitivity at 80% specificity was 99.2% in advanced glaucomatous eyes. Among the eight regions around the optic disc, RNFL thickness of region ST (AUC = 0.915, 0.926 and 0.966 in early, moderate and advanced glaucomatous eyes, respectively) achieved the highest AUC. RNFL thicknesses of the nasal and temporal regions showed the lowest AUCs.

CONCLUSIONS: RTVue OCT shows fair discriminating ability in distinguishing normal from glaucomatous eyes. RTVue OCT is a useful equipment for the diagnosis of glaucoma.