Effect of Smoking on Choroidal Thickness in Healthy Smokers

Purpose: To evaluate the acute and chronic effects of cigarette smoking on the choroidal thickness of young male smokers with smoking histories exceeding 10 years using spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD OCT). Materials and methods: The right eyes of 40 never-smoking and 30 smoking healthy subjects were included in this study. We measured the choroidal thicknesses of the never-smoking subjects as a control group. The choroidal thicknesses of the smoking subjects were measured before, 5, 30 and 60 min after smoking. Choroidal thickness measurements were taken at the fovea and at two points that were 1500 mm nasal and temporal to the fovea. Results: No significant difference was found for the retinal thickness, choroidal thicknesses, spherical equivalent, intraocular pressure and central corneal thickness of the smokers and non-smokers (p>0.05 for all). In the measurements that were taken after smoking, a statistically significant increase was found in choroidal thickness that was observed between 0 and 5 min for the central, nasal and temporal segments (p<0.001 for all). Conclusions: Smoking caused acute, significant increase in choroidal thickness that returned to baseline levels after 1 h. The choroidal and retinal thicknesses did not differ significantly between the healthy young smokers and non-smokers.