Purpose: The purpose of this article is to evaluate alterations in the corneal endothelial layer in Behçet's disease (BD) with inactive ocular involvement using specular microscopy.
Materials and methods: Thirty-three eyes of 33 BD patients who had at least one anterior segment involvement and no active inflammation in the last 3 months were included in the study (group 1). Twenty-seven of the 33 BD patients had an anterior uveitis attack and six of them had a panuveitis (both anterior and posterior involvement) attack. Thirty-three eyes of 33 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects were enrolled in the control group (group 2). Corneal endothelial cell density (CD), coefficient of variation (CV), hexagonal cell ratio (HEX), and central corneal thickness (CCT) were measured using specular microscopy (Konan Medical, Nishinomiya, Japan), and the results were compared between groups.
Results: The mean CD was 2739 ± 164.18 cells/mm2 in group 1 and 2922 ± 107.60 cells/mm2 in group 2 (p = 0.001). The mean CV was 32.9 ± 4.76 in group 1 and 28.5 ± 3.06 in group 2 (p = 0.001). The mean HEX was 44.7 ± 6.51 in group 1 and 49.7 ± 6.10 in group 2 (p = 0.019). The mean CCT was 545.75 ± 40.89 μ in group 1 and 545.66 ± 30.09 μ in group 2 (p > 0.05).
Conclusions: Ocular attacks in our BD patients may have caused permanent changes in the corneal endothelial layer. However, these changes did not lead to corneal decompensation, but further studies are necessary to confirm these results.
Keywords: Inactive Behçet’s disease; cornea; corneal endothelial morphology; specular microscopy.