Long-term follow-up with optical coherence tomography and microperimetry in eyes with metamorphopsia after macula-off retinal detachment repair.

PURPOSE: to report the long-term sequential morphological and functional results in eyes with metamorphopsia after retinal detachment (RD) repair. PATIENTS AND METHODS: in six eyes of six patients aged 58.7 ± 11.0 years with metamorphopsia after successful buckling surgery for macula-off RD, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), fundus biomicroscopy, Amsler grid test, time-domain optical coherence tomography (TD-OCT) and central 12° microperimetry (MP-1) were performed at months 1, 3, 6, 12, and 18. At 5 to 6 years after surgery all patients underwent also spectral domain (SD)-OCT.
RESULTS: three eyes slowly recovered pre-RD BCVA. In the remaining three eyes-with good final BCVA-the interrupted junction line between photoreceptor cell inner and outer segments (IS/OS) was progressively less evident after RD surgery; and the external limiting membrane was preserved on SD-OCT examination. In all eyes post-operative metamorphopsia faded with time, but fully disappeared in 6 years only in two eyes without photoreceptor abnormalities. One of the two eyes with subretinal fluid up to 6 months and IS/OS disruption had central dense scotoma with relatively unstable fixation on MP-1 and persistent metamorphopsia. Macular sensitivity (MS) increased from 9.7 ± 7.1 at month 1 to 13.5 ± 5.6 dB at the final check, and was weakly (r=0.33) correlated with post-operative BCVA and OCT abnormalities.
CONCLUSION: long-standing metamorphopsia can occur after successful macula-off RD repair even without detectable photoreceptor disruption on OCT. Post-operative BCVA recovery weakly correlates with increasing MS, and late restoration of the photoreceptor layer may be observed.