Abstract
Background
Blunt eye trauma is an important emergency in ophthalmology practice, and may alter the structure of the macula.
Objectives
To evaluate the optic coherence tomography (OCT) measurements of central macular thickness (CMT) among patients admitted to the hospital within 48 hours of blunt eye trauma.
Methods
Prospective cross-sectional study to evaluate patients who were admitted to hospital with blunt eye trauma within 48 hours trauma. Spectral domain OCT was used to measure macular thickness. CMT measurements of 24 healthy and 26 traumatized eyes of same patients were analyzed as control and case groups, respectively.
Results
The mean CMT measurements were 230.04 ± 18.64 μm in control and 226.50 ± 18.89 μm in traumatized groups. The difference between two groups was not statistically significant (P = 0.412). However, when the patients were classified according to the severity of trauma, CMT measurements of severely injured patients were found significantly lower than both healthy and mildly traumatized eyes (P = 0.008, P = 0.004, respectively).
Conclusions
Early stage macular OCT findings at blunt eye trauma may change with the severity of trauma. We have determined an insignificant increase in the mildly traumatized group in CMT compared with the healthy group within the first 48 hours of blunt trauma as a sign of macular trauma. However, in the severely traumatized group in CMT values significantly decreased, which may be a sign of cellular loss. Further prospective studies with long follow-up periods are warranted to elucidate the effects of this decrease in thickness.