Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is a crucial health issue that complicates roughly 10% of gestations and causes more than 50,000 deaths yearly worldwide. Many studies have appeared in the recent decade attempting to utilize Doppler study of the ophthalmic artery to anticipate the occurrence of preeclampsia and comparing its effectiveness to uterine artery Doppler, which is now considered the most accurate method employed, with promising results of equal sensitivity and specificity.
Objective: This study was designed to demonstrate the ability of changes in ophthalmic artery Doppler indices to predict the progression of preeclampsia.
Patients and methods: This prospective study comprised 120 pregnant women in total. The control group who remained normotensive throughout pregnancy included 96 women and those who developed preeclampsia (preeclampsia group) comprised of 24 women (16 with mild preeclampsia and 8 with severe preeclampsia).Those with severe preeclampsia had considerably higher ophthalmic artery PSV (P1), 2nd systolic peak (P2), peak ratio (p2/p1), and EDV than patients who remained normotensive.
Results: Ophthalmic artery PI had sensitivity of 89.7% and specificity of 75.12% at cutoff value < 1.76 in predicting pre-eclampsia. Also, ophthalmic artery RI had sensitivity of 80.2% and specificity of 74.9% at cutoff value < 0.77 in predicting pre-eclampsia. Peak Ratio (PR) of the ophthalmic artery had sensitivity of 77.3% and specificity of 65.8% at cutoff value > 0.59 in predicting pre-eclampsia. In addition, 2nd systolic peak (P2) ophthalmic artery had sensitivity of 91.7% and specificity of 61.7% at cutoff value > 20.1 in prophesying pre-eclampsia.
Conclusion: Doppler of the ophthalmic artery is an easy, reliable and unbiased technique with a standalone predictive diagnostic value for the development of PE and a promising excellent imaging procedure as the area under the curve for the peak ratio (PR) and the second systolic peak (P2) indices were more than 90%.