title: Long-term functional outcome of macular hole surgery correlated to optical coherence tomography measurements.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Evaluation of long-term functional outcome after macular hole surgery and its correlation with postoperative optical coherence tomography (OCT).
  
  
  METHODS
  Before and after surgery a complete clinical examination and OCT were performed in 38 patients. Best corrected postoperative visual acuity (VA) was correlated to the following OCT parameters: preoperative base and minimum diameter of the hole, hole height, hole form factor, retinal thickness and nerve-fibre layer measurements postoperatively, postoperative foveal contour, appearance of retinal pigment epithelium layer and photoreceptor layer.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Over a mean follow up of 67 months, VA improved significantly (P=0.01). Retinal thickness and retinal thickness and nerve-fibre layer measurements of the operated eye did not differ from fellow eye. A negative correlation was seen between final VA and preoperative base diameter of the hole (r=-0.41, P=0.02) and hole height (r=-0.45, P=0.01). The correlation between hole form factor values and final VA (r=0.36, P=0.04) was weak. Appearance of the photoreceptor band was the only OCT parameter significantly correlating with final VA (r=-0.42, P=0.01) and explaining the observed increase (r=-0.32, P=0.05) in VA.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Appearance of the photoreceptor layer on postoperative OCT correlates to functional outcome and may help to explain cases of unsatisfactory postoperative VA despite successful hole closure.
authors: Department of Ophthalmology, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. christos.haritoglou@med.uni-muenchen.de
authors: Christos
authors: C
authors: Haritoglou
authors: Aljoscha S
authors: AS
authors: Neubauer
authors: Ingrid W
authors: IW
authors: Reiniger
authors: Siegfried G
authors: SG
authors: Priglinger
authors: Carolin A
authors: CA
authors: Gass
authors: Anselm
authors: A
authors: Kampik
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001485:Basement Membrane / Q000601:surgery; D019773:Epiretinal Membrane / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020419:Photoreceptor Cells, Vertebrate / Q000473:pathology*; D011184:Postoperative Period; D012167:Retinal Perforations / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence; D014792:Visual Acuity / Q000502:physiology*