Materials and Methods: This study involved twelve eyes of twelve patients with branch retinal vein occlusion. The patients underwent complete ophthalmic examination, including corrected visual acuity measurement, slit lamp biomicroscopy, indirect ophthalmoscopy, color fundus photography, fluorescein angiography and optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Results: Twelve eyes of twelve patients with CME associated with branch retinal vein occlusion, aged 52 to 74 years (average 63.7) made up the study population. Angiographically, all patients had typical CME. At the time of initial examination no patient was suspected of having a SMD. The mean foveal thickness as determined by OCT was 476 µm. In all cases the increased thickness of the retina was related primarily to the hyporeflective intraretinal cavities. A SMD composed of dome shaped subretinal hyporeflective cavity was seen in nine eyes (75%).

Conclusion: OCT findings in this study showed that SMD in patient with CME secondary to branch retinal vein occlusion is a very frequent pathology. Our data also showed that ophthalmoscopy and fluorescein angiography were not sufficient to diagnose SMD in branch retinal vein occlusion. Keywords : Branch retinal vein occlusion, serous macular detachment, cystoid macular edema, optical coherence tomography.