A report by Professor Xiulan Zhang and Dr Fei Li at Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, China, has highlighted the racial differences in the density of macular and peripapillary capillaries in glaucomatous eyes.
Citing research by Moghimi et al, who evaluated peripapillary capillary densities (CD) in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), Prof Zhang and Dr Li’s results showed that after adjusting for age, disc area and other confounders, while healthy white subjects had higher peripapillary CD than healthy Black subjects, glaucomatous white patients had lower peripapillary CD than glaucomatous Black patients.
Writing in International Glaucoma Review, the authors concluded that upon establishment of a normative optical coherence tomography angiography CD database, a number of confounding factors should be considered, including age, gender, ethnicity and axial length, to improve the discriminatory power of CD in detecting glaucoma.
