Relationship of Corneal Endothelial Morphology and Central Corneal Thickness to Age and Sex in Normal Healthy individuals in our Community

Abstract

Background: Central corneal thickness and corneal endothelial morphology was studied along it's relationship with age and sex. Objective: To determine the normative data of central corneal thickness and endothelial morphology in our population. Methodology: This is a Cross-sectional study. The study was done at Ophthalmology Department, FRPMC in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki from March 2021 to August 2021 with approval from the Institutional review board. All healthy individuals aged 20 to 70 years presenting with any ocular complaints but no corneal pathology were included. Individuals with any systemic and ocular co-morbidity were excluded. After a complete ocular examination, corneal specular microscopy was done using REXAM SPM-700 corneal specular microscopes. In our study, we analyzed CCT, ECD, MCA, CV and hexagonality. The data was collected and recorded on an Excel spreadsheet and then transformed to SPSS version 22 for statistical analysis.

Results: 724 eyes from 362 individuals were studied for CCT and endothelial morphology using Rexam SPM-700 microscopes. There were 241(66.6%) males and 121(33.4%) females with mean age 38.33±10.17 years. Among 724 eyes we found CCT (508.43±33.4um), ECD (2565.12±254.15cell/mm²), AVG (393.81±40.72um²), CV (39.54±6.43%), and Hexa (46.18±6.64%). Statistically, there was no significant difference between the right and left eyes of the study population as well as gender-wise. There is a statistically significant inverse correlation of ECD with age (p<0.00, r:-0.19). However, a statistically insignificant inverse correlation is found for CV and Hexa with age (p<0.17, r:-0.05) (p<0.70, r:-0.014) respectively. Conclusion: Our study reports the normative corneal endothelial morphology and thickness in the Pakistani population attending FRPMC Ophthalmology Department. We also found that Central corneal thickness and Endothelial cell density decrease with aging and no statistical difference gender-wise.