Relationship Between Central Corneal Thickness and Scleral Thickness in Korean Glaucomatous Patients

Suk Gyu Ha; Yong Yeon Kim

doi:10.3341/jkos.2010.51.11.1485

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Ha and Kim: Relationship Between Central Corneal Thickness and Scleral Thickness in Korean Glaucomatous Patients

Original Article

J Korean Ophthalmol Soc 2010;51(11):1485-1490.

Published online: 7 September 2010

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3341/jkos.2010.51.11.1485

Relationship Between Central Corneal Thickness and Scleral Thickness in Korean Glaucomatous Patients

Suk Gyu Ha, MD, Yong Yeon Kim, MD, PhD

Department of Ophthalmology, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Address reprint requests to Yong Yeon Kim, MD, PhD Department of Ophthalmology, Korea University Guro Hospital #97 Gurodong-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul 152-703, Korea Tel: 82-2-2626-1260, Fax: 82-2-857-8580, E-mail: yongykim@mail.korea.ac.kr

Received 29 March 2010 Accepted 28 July 2010

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate the correlation between central corneal thickness (CCT) and scleral thickness (ST) in glaucoma patients.

Methods

Seventy-eight eyes of 78 patients with no previous history of intraocular surgery and 23 control eyes were enrolled in the present study. For all eyes, CCT, ST, axial length, anterior chamber depth and refractive error were measured by a single examiner. The correlations among the measurements were analyzed.

Results

The mean patient age was 57.32 ± 9.44 years, and the mean CCT was 532.80 ± 43.75 μ m. The mean CCT of ocular hypertension (576.00 ± 26.59 μ m) was thicker than that of the normal control group (530.30 ± 35.34 μ m, p = 0.028), although the mean STs of the groups were not significantly different. No significant correlation was found between CCT and ST (r = −0.073, p = 0.466).

Conclusions

In the present study, no correlation between CCT and ST was observed. In addition, the STs of the groups were not significantly different.

Keywords: Central corneal thickness, Scleral thickness, Ultrasound biomicroscopy

References

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Figure 1.

Ultrasound biomicroscopic image of the temporal corneoscleral limbus demonstrates the limits of episcleral tis-sue-sclera (outer yellow arrows) and sclera-ciliary body inter-faces (inner red arrows) at the three sites of measurements, the scleral spur (ST1), 2.0 and 3.0 mm posterior to it (ST2 and ST3, respectively).

Figure 2.

Anterior chamber depth (ACD) (Fig. A, B) and central corneal thickness (CCT) (Fig. C, D) in total patients. ACD in chronic angle closure glaucoma group was significantly narrower than control and that of the primary open angle glaucoma groups (p = 0.01, 0.00). CCT in ocular hypertension group was significantly thicker than control group and CCT in normal tension glaucoma group was significantly thiner than that of the control group (p = 0.00, 0.02). POAG = priamry open angle glaucoma; CACG = chronic angle closure glaucoma; NTG = normal tension glaucoma; OHT = ocular hypertension; Nor = normal controls.

Figure 3.

Correlation between central corneal thickness and scleral thickness (ST1) in total patinets. There was no correlation between central corneal thickness and scleral thickness (r =-0.073, p = 0.620).

Table 1.

Sex, age, spherical equivalent of the patients

	POAG	CACG	NTG	OHT	Nor
No. subjects	18	16	24	20	23
Female:males	7:11	6:10	15:9	10:10	8:15
Mean age± SD	56.72 ± 8.55	56.56 ± 10.01	59.08 ± 9.93	54.75 ± 9.93	58.70 ± 9.07
(Age range) (yrs)	(40 to 72)	(42 to 71)	(42 to 77)	(40 to 71)	(42 to 72)
SE ± SD	−0.03 ± 1.92	0.23 ± 1.92	0.41 ± 1.46	−0.17 ± 1.96	0.21 ± 1.55
(SE range)	(−4.75 to 3.25)	(−2.00 to 1.25)	(−3.55 to 2.25)	(−5.60 to 1.25)	(−3.25 to 3.25)

There were no statistically significant differences in variables among the 5 groups.

POAG = priamry open angle glaucoma; CACG = chronic angle closure glaucoma; NTG = normal tension glaucoma; OHT = ocular hypertension; Nor = normal controls; ACD = anterior chamber depth; SE = spherical equivalent; SD = standard deviation.

Table 2.

Axial length, anterior chamber depth (ACD), central corneal thickness (CCT) and scleral thickness (ST1, ST2, ST3) in the subgroups of the patients

	POAG	CACG	NTG	OHT	Nor
AL ± SD (mm)	23.96 ± 0.88	23.62 ± 1.09	24.05 ± 1.37	23.77 ± 1.32	23.75 ± 0.92
ACD ± SD (μ m)	336 ± 23.18	279.00 ± 41.83	297.08 ± 33.19	319.10 ± 29.19	323.48 ± 27.24
CCT ± SD (μ m)	540.39 ± 40.82	515.69 ± 37.79	504.91 ± 41.16	576.00 ± 26.59	530.30 ± 35.34
ST1 ± SD (μ m)	736.28 ± 78.31	736.99 ± 55.18	718.33 ± 69.22	749.95 ± 50.50	736.26 ± 62.18
ST2 ± SD (μ m)	702.11 ± 80.07	705.79 ± 64.08	683.79 ± 62.28	706.55 ± 60.54	700.17 ± 65.03
ST3 ± SD (μ m)	666.33 ± 81.65	675.72 ± 78.14	658.12 ± 61.25	680.15 ± 70.09	668.13 ± 74.84

ACD and CCT showed differences among the 5 groups (refer to Fig. 2). All other variables were not significantly different among the 5 groups.

POAG = priamry open angle glaucoma; CACG = chronic angle closure glaucoma; NTG = normal tension glaucoma; OHT = ocular hypertension; Nor = normal controls; CCT = central corneal thickness; AL = axial length; ACD = anterior chamber depth; SE = spherical equivalent; SD = standard deviation.

Table 3.

Correlations between central corneal thickness (CCT) and scleral thickness (ST) in total subjects

	CCT vs. ST1	CCT vs. ST2	CCT vs. ST3
r	−0.073	−0.061	−0.095
p^*	0.466	0.542	0.345

r = Pearson's correlation coefficient.

Table 4.

Correlation between central corneal thickness (CCT) and scleral thickness among the subgroups

	POAG		CACG		NTG		OHT
	r	p	r	p	r	p	r	p
CCT vs. ST1	−0.125	0.620	−0.580	0.038	0.106	0.622	−0.341	0.141
CCT vs. ST2	−0.032	0.899	−0.257	0.397	0.233	0.273	−0.316	0.175
CCT vs. ST3	0.059	0.816	−0.315	0.294	0.088	0.683	−0.419	0.066

POAG=priamry open angle glaucoma; CACG=chronic angle closure glaucoma; NTG=normal tension glaucoma; OHT=ocular hypertension. r = Spearman's correlation coefficient.

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