title: Missing correlation of retinal vessel diameter with high-altitude headache.
abstract: The most common altitude-related symptom, high-altitude headache (HAH), has recently been suggested to originate from restricted cerebral venous drainage in the presence of increased inflow caused by hypoxia. In support of this novel hypothesis, retinal venous distension was shown to correlate with the degree of HAH. We quantified for the first time retinal vessel diameter changes at 4559 m using infrared fundus images obtained from a state of the art Spectralis™ HRA+OCT with a semiautomatic VesselMap 1® software. High-altitude exposure resulted in altered arterial and venous diameter changes at high altitude, however, independent of headache burden.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ophthalmology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Willmann
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ophthalmology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany ; Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, University of Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: M Dominik
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.affiliation: Department of Sports Medicine, Medical Clinic, University Hospital Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schommer
authors.affiliation: Department of Sports Medicine, Medical Clinic, University Hospital Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bärtsch
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ophthalmology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany ; Department of Ophthalmology, Katharinenhospital Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gekeler
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ophthalmology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schatz