Jornal de Oftalmologia Clínica e Experimental
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Schlemms Canal in OCT Images in Glaucoma Patients and Healthy Subjects

Viera Forgačova, Jan Lestak, Sarka Pitrova and Pavel Rozsival

Objective: To determine by means of optical coherence tomography (OCT) whether there are changes in Schlemm’s canal (SC) in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) compared to healthy controls and whether the SC dimension varies during the treatment facilitating the outflow of intraocular humor through the uveoscleral pathway.

Patients and methods of examination: 62 eyes of 31 POAG patients (22 women aged 27-83 and 9 men aged 26-80) were included in our set. The patients did not suffer from any other disease of the anterior segment of the eye. Intraocular pressure (IOP) was compensated by drug treatment and its values were in the range of 10-20 mmHg. The group was compared with 92 eyes of 46 healthy subjects (33 women aged 19-71 and 13 men aged 39-79). The SC of all of them was examined by anterior segment OCT-system with a Visante OCT Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc. in horizontal meridian No. 3 and 9.

Results: The comparisons show that the values of right and left eyes of controls (p=0.474) and patients (p=0.143) did not differ. The re-external (0.00029), le-external (p=0.0031), re-internal (p=0.0015), le-internal (p=0.0002) SC dimensions between the control and patient groups differed significantly with the controls always having values significantly higher than the glaucoma patients. Treatment by prostaglandins and beta-blockers did not affect the size of the SC (p=0.23 to 0.95).

Conclusion: In POAG eyes, SC size is smaller than in the eyes of the control group. Eyes on prostaglandin treatment had the same size than those on beta blockers.