Baden KT and co-workers introduced a new grading system for determining the influence and extent of macular detachment seen in preoperative optical coherence tomography (OCT) evaluation in relation to the postoperative visual outcome and timing of surgical intervention.
The researchers retrospectively included 155 patients who were treated for retinal detachment. The extent of the macular detachment was defined in six stages based on the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) grid of the OCT scan. The outermost ring of the ETDRS grid was defined as zone 1, the middle ring as zone 2 and the inner ring as zone 3. Only zone 3 differed in the retinal detachment height grades (grade a <250 μm vs grade b >250 μm). Retinal detachment heights that could not be measured were considered grade 4 detachments.
Baden KT and co-workers proposed that this new OCT grading system is standardised and could be a useful tool for all upcoming studies relating to retinal detachment. They stressed that such uniform OCT grading system could harmonise all the studies for retinal detachment and make acomparison between these studies possible.
Boden KT, Januschowski K, Szurman P, et al. New optical coherence tomography grading system for macula-off rhegmatogenous retinal detachment: how off is off? BMJ Open Ophthalmology 2021;6:e000419. doi:10.1136/ bmjophth-2019-000419 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768162/
