The effect of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment on retinal oxygenation

Petri AS, Krarup TG, Traustason S, Hajari JN, Hardarson SH, Kyhnel A, Kiilgaard JF, Stefansson E, de La Cour MD. Acta Ophthalmologica. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/aos.70159 If you detach photoreceptors from their choroidal oxygen supply, you’d expect the inner retinal vessels to make up the difference to help keep the photoreceptors alive. Petri and colleagues used non-invasive retinal oximetry on 128 eyes with recent rhegmatogenous detachments and found the opposite: arterial saturation dipped, venous saturation rose, and retinal arteriovenous difference shrank. There are three possible explanations: protective metabolic downregulation, reduced blood flow, or cell death already underway. This paper is the first in vivo human look at the question, and it complicates the old assumption that pre-op oxygen supplementation is straightforwardly helpful.