The Effects of Gender, Age, and Refractive Error on Corneal and Conjunctival Epithelial and Overall Thicknesses

• Main Authors: İsmail Erşan, Selçuk Kara, Sedat Arıkan, Baran Gencer, Hasan Ali Tufan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Modestum Publishing LTD 2016-03-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical and Experimental Investigations
• Subjects: Anterior segment optical coherence tomog­raphy; epithelial thickness
• Online Access: http://jceionline.org/upload/sayi/30/JCEI-01285.pdf
• ISSN: 1309-6621; 1309-8578

Objective: To evaluate the corneal, conjunctival epithelial and overall thicknesses measured by anterior segment optical coherence tomography (OCT) in healthy popula­tion. Methods: This retrospective study included 134 eyes of 134 healthy individuals who were undergone a Cirrus HD-OCT examination using the Anterior Segment 5 Line Ras­ter protocol. Corneal, conjunctival epithelial and overall thicknesses were measured on OCT images. The aver­age values of four OCT parameters were compared be­tween sexes and among the six subgroups with respect to age. Results: The average corneal epithelial and overall thick­nesses were 51.30±4.60 μm and 532.47±37.30 μm, re­spectively. The average conjunctival epithelial and over­all thicknesses were 47.20±8.03 μm and 237.07±40.62 μm, respectively. All of the measurements were thicker in males compared to females, however the significant dif­ference was found for only corneal epithelium (p=0.043). Using the Spearman correlation coefficient, central cor­neal and conjunctival epithelial thicknesses showed sig­nificant negative correlations with age (p=0.006, p=0.005, respectively) and refraction (p=0.040, p=0.033, respec­tively). Conclusion: Ocular surface parameters measured by anterior segment OCT were gender, age, and refraction-related. Thus, further studies conducted to evaluate the corneal and conjunctival thicknesses should involve gen­der, age, and refraction-matched control groups. J Clin Exp Invest 2016; 7 (1): 78-82