The Relationship of Axial length and Peripheral Retinal Degeneration

ABSTRACT

To investigate the relationship between peripheral retinal degeneration and axial length, we conducted a clinical study on 254 subjectives (508 eyes) whose age lie between 19-25 years and who had no other ocular disease nor any previous eye surgery. Axial length was measured with A-scan ultrasonography and retinal periphery was inspected by 360 degrees biomicroscopic examination with Goldmann three-mirror lens. The recorded degenerative peripheral retinal lesions were; lattice degeneration, pigmentary degeneration, cystoid degeneration, white without pressure, retinal hole or tears, retinal detachment, posterior vitreous detachment. The statistical analysis was done by using the chi-square test. The mean axial length was 24.01 +/- 1.08mm with a range of 21.8 to 27.9mm. The overall prevalence of the peripheral retinal degenerations increased as axial length did. Specially, that of pigmentary, cystoid, lattice degeneration was significantly related with long axial length individually for each lesion(p<0.01). However, there was a significantly greater percentage(53.37%) of all lesions in 23.0 - 24.9mm axial length group. These results suggest that the frequency of peripheral retinal degeneration increased with axial length but there was a posibility that the peripheral retinal degenerative lesions can be found in eyes of the mean and the shorter axial length.