Inter-observer agreement in grading severity of diabetic retinopathy in wide-field fundus photographs.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the inter-observer agreement between two retina specialists in grading diabetic retinopathy (DR) severity in ultra-wide-field fundus photographs. METHODS: Two hundred and seventy patients with diabetes, who visited the vitreoretinal specialty at a tertiary eye care hospital, with or without DR underwent comprehensive ophthalmic examination, dilated retinal exam and Optos ultra-wide-field (UWF) retinal photography. Optos images were graded for DR severity based on the International Clinical Diabetic Retinopathy Disease Severity Scale by two retina specialists with same number of years of experience, masked to the clinical details of the participants. RESULTS: The two graders showed agreement in 229/270 images (84.8%) and disagreement in 41/270 images (15.2%). The unweighted kappa for agreement between graders was k = 0.715, SE = 0.037 and the weighted kappa was k = 0.838, SE = 0.022. No DR was identified in 170/270 (62.9%) patients, mild NPDR in 15/270 (5.6%) patients, moderate NPDR in 35/270 (12.9%) patients, severe NPDR in 4/270 (1.48%) patient and PDR in 5/270 (1.85%) patients by both graders. Disagreement was neither related to the learning curve of graders nor with the patient's age (p = 0.574), gender (p = 0.169), duration of diabetes (0.660) or the lens being phakic or pseudophakic (p = 0.171) on logistic regression. CONCLUSIONS: The impact of disagreement noted between observers in grading DR on UWF fundus photographs should be considered when utilizing UWF system in clinical studies.

OCT angiography features of paracentral acute middle maculopathy.

Paracentral acute middle maculopathy (PAMM) refers to retinal lesions with changes in the inner nuclear layer on spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT). PAMM is associated with retinal vascular pathology involving the deep capillary plexus. We report two cases of PAMM in Indian subjects using multimodal imaging highlighting the OCT angiography (OCTA) findings. The first case is of a middle-aged female with a paracentral scotoma with SS-OCT (swept-source optical coherence tomography) and OCTA findings suggestive of "chronic" PAMM. The second case presented with sudden decreased vision, and multiple creamy white lesions suggestive of "acute" PAMM, imaging features depicting a possible venular obstruction. These cases demonstrate the importance of considering PAMM as a differential diagnosis in patient presenting with nonspecific visual complains and apparently normal ophthalmic examination. The recognition of PAMM should prompt an appropriate evaluation and investigation.