Purpose: To determine possible impacts on retinal microvasculature in healthy young adults during exercise with a face mask, using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).
Methods: Twenty-three healthy participants (23 eyes, 17 women and 6 men) performed the incremental continuous running test (ICRT) with different masks. OCTA of the macula and optic nerve head were performed before and after ICRT to detect changes in retinal vessel density (VD). All participants were in groups A, B, and C (before ICRT) and groups A', B', and C' (after ICRT), which comprised data from volunteers without a mask, with a surgical mask, and with an N95 mask, respectively.
Results: Before ICRT, group C showed significantly reduced VD in the superficial plexus (SP), except foveal VD, compared with group A (P < 0.05). After ICRT, groups B' and C' showed significantly shorter maximum running time, lower oxygen saturation, and lower perifoveal VD of SP compared with group A' (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: Use of an N95 mask reduced VD in SP even under quiescent conditions, which might have clinical implications for protecting healthy workers and indoor manual labor workers from potential risks of retinal damage due to long-term mask use. Moreover, mask use while exercising might lead to attenuated exercise ability and lower VD in SP, which should be investigated in additional studies.
Translational relevance: Retina vascular perfusion dynamics could be monitored in vivo by OCTA, which would be valuable to study physiologic retinal blood flow redistribution and potential impacts on retinal vascular perfusion during exercise with face masks.