Nystagmus with pendular low amplitude, high frequency components (PLAHF) in association with retinal disease.

Purposes: To establish a relation between pendular low amplitude high frequency (PLAHF) components and congenital retinal disorders.

Methods

Patients who showed PLAHF components in their eye-movement recording between January 2016 to January 2019 were included. Best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), refraction, strabismus assessment, fundus photograph, spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), full-field electroretinography (f-ERG), clinical ophthalmological examination, and gene tests were used to determine their clinical conditions, especially their retina conditions in all patients.

Results

Among 136 patients there were 76 males and 60 females with mean age of 11.4.5 ± 4.5 years. Pure PLAHF waveforms were found in 38 patients (28%), the amplitude of the PLAHF was 2°±1.6° and frequency was 5-10 Hz. Superimposed PLAHF waveforms were found in 98 patients (72%). BCVA was worse than Log MAR1.0 in 94 patients (69%), between LogMar 0.5-1.0 (20/63-20/200) in 30 cases (22%); higher than LogMar 0.5 (20/63) in 12 cases (9%). Fifty-eight patients were diagnosed with exotropia and six patients with esotropia. Abnormal Fundus were found in 71 cases (52%), fovea hypoplasia was identified with OCT in 95 cases (70%) and retinal thinning in 92 cases (68%). Abnormal on-off VEP were found in 116 cases (85%). The f-ERG responses were reduced in all patients. In 46 patients, gene mutations were found to related to retinal disease, including 3 congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB), 14 achromatopsia (ACHM), 5 Aland Island eye disease (AIED), 7 Alstrom syndrome (AS), 11 Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), 6 cone-rod dystrophy (CRD).

Conclusions

Patients presenting with PLAHF usually had retinal disorders.