The goal of this study was to compare the effects of topical anesthesia on image quality and artifacts of Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA).

In an interventional case series, for nineteen nurses, OCTA was performed in both eyes. In the right eye of all cases, Tetracaine eye drop was applied. To compensate learning effect on cases cooperation, ten of the cases had undergone OCTA first on right eye after Tetracaine drop, and others first the left eye without any intervention. OCTA cube scans (3×3 mm) were acquired using the RTVue XR Avanti AngioVue, with Split-Spectrum Amplitude-Decorrelation Angiography algorithm, and motion correction technology. Number of horizontal and vertical saccadic, blink, and stretch artifacts and also signal strength of the images were recorded. Moreover, pain and discomfort based on subjective score was recorded as overall discomfort and discomfort experienced by blue focus light and red scanning laser.

All the cases were female nurses of ophthalmology department. Discomfort by blue light, red light and overall pain experience by the cases were less in the anesthetized eye (p values = 0.018, 0.035 and 0.013 respectively). Signal strength (p-value: 0.023) was different but horizontal and vertical saccadic artifacts, stretch and blink artifacts were not different.

Our study suggests that anesthetizing before OCTA may improve the image quality and may irritate less the patients. As OCTA capturing needs more cooperation and less blinking and attention to a point for a relatively long time, anesthetizing the eye may help patients cooperate more.