Evaluation of Retinal Arterial Occlusion and its Visual and Systemic Prognosis after Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the systemic and ocular outcomes of patients with branch retinal artery occlusion (BRAO) and central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) after hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT).

METHODS

This is a single-institution study of 75 subjects diagnosed with BRAO (28, 37.3%) and CRAO (47, 62.7%) who visited the emergency department or stroke clinic. Twenty-seven (36%) subjects received HBOT on initial presentation (BRAO-14.3%, CRAO-48.9%). The primary outcome was the best corrective visual acuity (BCVA) change in non-HBOT and HBOT subjects. Secondary outcomes included subsequent development of an acute cerebrovascular accident (CVA)/stroke or neovascular glaucoma (NVG).

RESULTS

Overall BCVA did not change from the initial presentation to the final timepoint (logMAR 1.5) in either the conservative management or HBOT cohorts for either BRAO subjects (non-HBOT-logMAR 0.4 vs. 0.6, p=0.658; HBOT-logMAR 0.1 vs. 0.4, p=0.207) or CRAO subjects (non-HBOT-logMAR 2.1 vs. 2.2, p=0.755; HBOT-logMAR 2.1 vs. 2.0, p=0.631). Seven (9.3%) subjects developed CVA (BRAO: non-HBOT-4.2% and HBOT-25.0%, p=0.207; CRAO: non-HBOT-16.7% and HBOT-4.3%, p=0.348) and five subjects (6.7%) developed NVG (BRAO: non-HBOT-4.2% and HBOT-0%, p=1.00; CRAO: non-HBOT-16.7% and HBOT-0%, p=0.109).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that HBOT does not significantly improve BCVA or mitigate the subsequent development of stroke and NVG in patients with RAOs.