Corneal and lens densitometry evaluation with Pentacam HR in children and adolescents with beta thalassemia major: a case–control study
Abstract
Beta thalassemia major is an inherited blood disorder due to a mutation of the β globin chain gene. Ocular complications have increasingly been reported in β-thalassemia patients with a negative influence on the health related quality of life. Many studies have reported the ocular anomalies, mainly focused on the posterior ocular segment; however, the data is limited regarding the anterior segment structures. We aimed to evaluate the corneal and lens densitometry using the Pentacam HR in children and adolescents with transfusion dependent β-thalassemia major in comparative to healthy controls and to detect the subclinical ocular affection in those patients. A case–control study was conducted on 47 regularly transfused β-thalassemia major patients and 47 age and sex-matching healthy controls. Assessments of corneal keratometry, corneal densitometry (12 mm corneal diameter), and lenticular densitometry were done by the Pentacam HR imaging. The morphology of the corneal endothelium was examined by the specular microscopy. Among the corneal topographic parameters, K1 (P = 0.037, P = 0.024 on right and left sides respectively), K2 (P < 0.001 bilaterally), and CV (P < 0.001 bilaterally) were found to be significantly lower in the cases group in relative to controls. Endothelial cell density (ECD) was found to be significantly less among thalassemic patients. We detected a significantly lower corneal light backscattering in the cases group in almost all corneal layers. There was a…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Characterization and Analysis of Porosity and Pore Structures
- Practical considerations for conducting ecotoxicity test methods with manufactured nanomaterials: what have we learnt so far?
- Dental Optical Coherence Tomography
- Radiation-shielding concrete: A review of materials, performance, and the impact of radiation on concrete properties
- Testing entanglement of annihilation photons
- Calanus finmarchicus seasonal cycle and diapause in relation to gene expression, physiology, and endogenous clocks
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.