Macular ganglion cell complex thickness in acute and chronic central serous chorioretinopathy

Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR) is characterized by neurosensory retinal detachment. Because the retina pigment epithelium and choroidal pathology is the current mechanism in CSCR, many studies in the literature focused on the outer retinal layers. There is little information about the functional or histological structure of the detached retina. In this study, we assess the ganglion cell complex (GCC) thickness using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in patients with acute and chronic CSCR. The medical records of 16 acute and 19 chronic CSCR patients which have no other disorders that cause a serous macula detachment were analyzed. Chronic cases were also divided into two subgroups: chronic active and chronic nonactive CSCR. The eyes with extramacular involvement or cystoid degeneration and cases which developed choroidal neovascularization were excluded from the study. The mean, minimum, superior-nasal, superior, superior-temporal, inferior-nasal, inferior, and inferior-temporal GCC values obtained using OCT were used for analysis. The duration from the onset was 7.8 +/- 4.5 weeks and the mean age was 45.0 +/- 10.7 years in acute CSCR, and in chronic cases the values were 36.0 +/- 6.2 weeks and 52.9 +/- 10.5 years, respectively. There were no significant differences in sex distribution. The chronic cases were statistically significantly older than acute cases (p = 0.02). While there was no difference between the acute and chronic cases, there were statistically significant differences between the chronic CSCR and control group in all values of GCC. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences between the acute CSCR and control group in mean, minimum, and superior-temporal GCC thicknesses. Although choroid and outer retinal layers play an important role in the pathogenesis of CSCR, there is scant information about the functional or histological structure of the detached retina in CSCR. Our results showed that GCC was significantly reduced in both acute and chronic CSCR compared to healthy subjects. Analysis of ganglion cell helps us understand the etiology of the patients which healed anatomically but had limited visual improvement in CSCR.