The eye: window to the soul or a mirror of systemic health?

Prospective measurement of the retinal arteriole:venule ratio (AVR) helps to predict incident hypertension, 8 the incidence and progression of diabetes 9 and the need for amputations in diabetes. 10 These associations persist after adjustment for other risk factors such as age, hypertension, diabete... Full description

Prospective measurement of the retinal arteriole:venule ratio (AVR) helps to predict incident hypertension, 8 the incidence and progression of diabetes 9 and the need for amputations in diabetes. 10 These associations persist after adjustment for other risk factors such as age, hypertension, diabetes and smoking. [...]it appears that measurement of the AVR is an important addition to risk profiling in major causes of morbidity and mortality. Scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO) to measure optic nerve head topography has been in widespread clinical use for diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma, a chronic progressive optic neuropathy, for a decade. 13 SLO imaging performs at least as well as human observers grading photographic images of the optic nerve. 14 A competing technology, scanning laser polarimetry (SLP), allows quantitative assessment of the thickness of the retinal nerve fibre layer, and is also in widespread use in the management of glaucoma. 15 Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was initially shown to be a method of in vitro imaging of the retina and coronary arteries, 16 but rapidly became adapted for in vivo ophthalmic imaging, and is now widely used in diagnosis and management of retinal and optic nerve pathology, and as a tool for examination of the cornea and anterior segment of the eye.