Sheuli Kumar, Swati Majumdar, Suman Mukherjee, Mukul C. Biswas, Pinaki Sengupta
BACKGROUND Smoking causes serious health problems worldwide. This study was intended to evaluate the possible structural changes like thickness in the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) of moderate to heavy smokers and compare them with those of healthy nonsmokers using time domain optical coherence tomography (TD-OCT). MATERIALS AND METHODS We included 100 active smokers (35 cases are heavy smokers and 65 cases are moderate smokers) and 100 age- and sexmatched healthy non-smokers between 20 years to 50 years for this cross-sectional study. After a full ophthalmological examination, TD-OCT was done for all participants and peripapillary RNFL thickness was measured in all four quadrants in both the groups and then compared. RESULTS Mean age of smokers was 38.65±8.18. Mean ages of severe smokers (SS), moderate smokers (MS) and non-smokers (NS) were 43.2±7.09 years, 39.85±7.59 years and 36.11±8.06 years respectively. Age matched analysis of RNFL thickness showed significant difference between smokers and non-smokers. It showed significant decrease in average thickness specially over inferior (129.82±19.9), superior (123.48±20.48) and nasal quadrants (82.57±21.69) (p values <0.001). Severe smokers have significant RNFL thinning over nasal quadrant (p <0.001) than moderate smokers. However, temporal quadrant showed no difference in both the cases and controls. CONCLUSION Smoking causes significant RNFL thinning in chronic, healthy cigarette smokers. OCT could be a useful tool for early detection of ocular damage in chronic healthy smokers. However, no significant correlation was found between number of cigarettes smoked per day and RNFL thinning
