Optical coherence tomography profile of macular structure and ocular dominance in young adults

Background: Ocular dominance is used clinically for decisions on monovision in contact lens wear and treating binocular vision anomalies.Aim: This study aimed to investigate the association between macular structure and ocular dominance in normal-sighted young adult Sudanese by using optical coherence tomography (OCT).Setting: The study was conducted at Al-Neelain eye hospital, Faculty of optometry and visual sciences, Khartoum, Sudan.Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional and comparative study was conducted in 160 eyes of 80 healthy young adults. Central macular thickness (CMT), peripapillary retinal nerve fibre layer (NFL) thickness and inner retinal layers were investigated in each subject using OCT. Hole-in-the-card was used to detect ocular dominance.Results: The findings showed that the mean value of CMT for dominant eyes was slightly thicker (224.53 ± 17.18 μm) than in non-dominant eyes (224.36 ± 16.18 μm; P = 0.947). Whereas NFL thickness for dominant eyes was thicker at 31.87 ± 10.43 μm than in non-dominant 130.83 ± 10.30 μm with P = 0.528. In general, there were no highly significant differences between dominant eyes and non-dominant eyes found in macular parameters (P  0.05).Conclusion: Central macular thickness, NFL, ganglion cell layer and retinal pigmented epithelium may have some impact on determining ocular dominance in healthy adults. We believe that the exact mechanism and effects of ocular dominance remain unclear. Thus, further evaluation is needed.Contribution: This study observed slight thicker in macular parameters for the dominant eye, particularly in CMT and NFL thickness.