Retinal thickness and microvascular alterations in the diagnosis of behcet's disease: a case-control study

Background In the current study optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) was used to compare retinal thickness (RT) and superficial vascular density (SVD) in patients with Behcet's disease (BD) and healthy controls. Methods The study included 17 BD patients (34 eyes) and 17 healthy participants (34 eyes). Each eye had an en-face OCTA scan. Macular RT and SVD were assessed in both groups after segmenting each image into 9 subregions. Results BD patients and controls had significantly different visual acuity (p < 0.001). Compared to the control group, BD patients had increased inner RT in the inner superior, inferior, temporal, outer superior, inferior, and center regions, and increased full RT in the inner inferior, outer inferior and superior regions (p < 0.05). RT was positively correlated with visual acuity in the outer and full retina at outer temporal regions (p < 0.05). Also, c-reactive protein was positively correlated with full and outer RT in the center region in patients with BD (p < 0.05). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the outer nasal region of the SVD was 0.913 (95% confidence interval: 0.835-0.991). Conclusion The OS region of full RT and the II region of inner RT in the macular region may serve as a diagnostic marker for BD, and has clinical significance for auxiliary imaging diagnosis.