Fig 1.
Change in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) after pneumatic displacement of the submacular hemorrhage.
The mean BCVA improved significantly from baseline at 3 months (P < 0.001) and 6 months (P < 0.001). Patients with polypoidal vasculopathy showed a better BCVA at baseline (P = 0.002), 3 months (P = 0.015), and 6 months (P = 0.012) after treatment; however, the BCVA improvements were not different.
Table 1.
Baseline characteristics of 37 patients with submacular hemorrhage treated with pneumatic displacement, and the correlations between baseline characteristics and logMAR best-corrected visual acuity measured at 6 months.
Fig 2.
Reflectance of submacular hemorrhage (SMH) was positively correlated with symptom duration (2A, R2 = 0.185, P = 0.008).
Reflectance was also positively correlated with logMAR best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) at 6 months (2B, R2 = 0.2239, P = 0.030). In turn, high reflectance of the submacular hemorrhage on conventional optical coherence tomograph was associated with longer symptom duration and worse visual outcome at 6 months.
Table 2.
Baseline characteristics of polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy and typical exudative age-related macular degeneration.
Fig 3.
Fundus photograph and optical coherence tomograph of two distinctive cases: before and after pneumatic displacement of submacular hemorrhage.
The shortest radius of submacular hemorrhage from the fovea was 393 μm for case 1 (A) and 1617 μm for case 2 (B). The insets of C and D show the magnified views of a 20-micron-diameter circle at the top of the hemorrhage, for which the grey scale was used for reflectance measurement. The reflectance (in arbitrary units) of cases 1 and 2 were 137.8 and 163.8, respectively (C, D). Two weeks after pneumatic displacement, submacular hemorrhage was significantly extruded in case 1 (E) but not in case 2 (F).