OCT for optic disc evaluation in idiopathic intracranial hypertension

Background Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables quantification of retinal layer thicknesses. Studies evaluating the ability of OCT to identify and quantify papilledema are few. Therefore, the aim was to evaluate the applicability of peripapillary OCT evaluation in an unselected, consecutive series of patients with confirmed idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH). Methods A case-control study of 20 patients with newly diagnosed IIH and 20 healthy subjects. Subjects were evaluated by means of direct ophthalmoscopy, masked evaluations of fundus photography, peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer thickness (RNFLT), and peripapillary average retinal thickness (PART) measurements (Stratus OCT-3, fast RNFL 3.4 protocol). Results OCT evaluation of PART revealed the highest number of patients ( n = 20) with optic disc abnormalities in either eye (90%), compared with 85%, 80% and 70% for RNFLT measurements, direct ophthalmoscopy, and fundus photography respectively. There was a linear association between means and differences of OCT data (RNFLT, PART) with a slope of 0.54 (SE 0.025), p