Repository of DUTH

Υπο-ωχρικό πάχος χοριοειδούς χιτώνα σε γλαυκωματικούς ασθενείς (Master thesis)

Χαδουλός, Νικόλαος

This study will examine the sub-foveal thickness of the choroid in glaucoma patients compared to healthy people. The pubmed.gov website was searched for original papers, using "choroidal thickness" and "glaucoma" as keywords, and found three hundred and eighty-five possible results, which have been published in the last ten years. After the collection and processing of existing publications, twenty-two studies were selected, providing sufficient information to support and answer the basic hypothesis of this meta-analysis. Of all the papers, sixteen are related to open-angle glaucoma patients, four are case-control studies that compare patients with pseudoexfoliation glaucoma to healthy controls, and there are four studies, which report on patients with primary closed-angle glaucoma. In all meta-analysis studies, optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used with enhanced depth imaging for greater value accuracy. In these studies the sub-foveal choroidal thickness is correlated to, the intraocular pressure of the control patients, the mean axial length of the eye, the mean ages of the control patients, and the mean value of the visual field values for those studies containing this parameter. The statistical analysis compared the values of the above variables in order to conclude possible static differences between the glaucoma and control groups. In conclusion, there is no statistically significant difference in the sub-foveal choroidal thickness between glaucoma patients and controls. This conclusion is consistent with the results of other meta-analyses and systematic reviews.