OCTA used to assess macular vessel density in Stargardt disease

BALTIMORE — Patients with Stargardt disease had a lower vessel density in the deep retina, according to a study presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology annual meeting. This suggests there is a significant decrease in the vascular layers after damage to the photoreceptors and retinal pigment epithelium.“Previous studies have found that choroidal retinal atrophy and a loss of the choroidal vascular to be a factor in Stargardt, and since OCT is a new modality, which can see the deep layers of the retina and choroid and measure the vascular density ... we thought to see whether it could serve as a useful marker in Stargardt,” Mustafa Iftikhar, MD, from the Quantum Vision Reading Center, Johns Hopkins University Wilmer Eye Institute, told Healio.com/OSN.