The spectrum of central choriocapillaris abnormalities on swept‐source optical coherence tomography angiography in the fellow eye of unilateral exudative age‐related macular degeneration patients: From flow deficits to subclinical non‐exudative neovascularization

We evaluated the spectrum of choriocapillaris (CC) abnormalities in the fellow eyes of unilateral exudative age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) patients using swept‐source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS‐OCTA). Fellow eyes of unilateral exudative AMD patients were prospectively included between May 2018 and October 2018. Patients underwent a multi-modal imaging including a SS‐OCTA. Demographics and clinical findings were analyzed. The esti-mated prevalence of macular neovascularization (MNV) was computed. Number and size of flow deficits (FDs) and percentage of flow deficits (FD%) were computed on the compensated CC flow images with the Fiji software. We included 97 eyes of 97 patients (mean age was 80 ± 7.66 years, 39 males, 58 females). The prevalence of MNV in the studied eyes was 8.25% (8/97 eyes). In the 89 non-neovascular eyes, FD% averaged 45.84% ± 11.63%, with a corresponding total area of FDs of 4.19 ± 1.12 mm2. There was a higher prevalence of drusenoid pigment epithelial detachment in eyes with subclinical neovascularization (p = 0.021). Fellow eyes with unilateral exudative AMD encompassed a series of CC abnormalities, from FDs of the aging CC to subclinical non‐exudative MNV.