PRESENTING AUTHOR

This study aimed to identify and evaluate vascular changes by coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) in pregnant patients with a diagnosis of Diabetes Mellitus (DM).

A cross-sectional study was conducted. 90 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of pregnancy in whom an ophthalmological examination was performed that included OCT and OCT-A. The sample was divided into 4 groups, 30 patients in the Gestational Diabetes group, 26 patients in the DM2 group, 4 patients in the DM1 group and 30 patients in the group of pregnant women without DM.

The 10.5% of pregnant patients with Diabetes who clinically did not present data of Diabetic Retinopathy, showed structural changes: microaneurysms, alterations of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and areas of non-perfusion in the OCT-A study. Foveal avascular zone alterations were the most common morphology anomaly. Patients with gestational diabetes show an increase in the density and percentage of perfusion of the superficial plexus, unlike other types of Diabetes, where there is a significant decrease. Pregnant patients without Diabetes do not show significant changes in the superficial plexus vasculature measured by OCT-A.

It was established that there are clinical and angio-tomographic changes in pregnant patients, in addition to differences in the values of vascular density and FAZ depending on the type of diabetes and the trimester of pregnancy in which it occurred. It is important to highlight that those patients with gestational diabetes present subclinical alterations which may be undetectable with other images methods.