This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
OCT study: Lucentis decreased retinal thickness in AMD
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
MONTREAL - Central retinal thickness was reduced in patients with age-related macular degeneration as early as 1 day after treatment with a VEGF-inhibiting drug, according to study results reported here. Vision also improved in the patients by day 14, a speaker said.
Eyes treated with Lucentis (ranibizumab, Genentech) demonstrated diminished retinal thickness on optical coherence tomography and “continuous improvement” in visual acuity through 3 months of follow-up, according to Anne E. Fung, MD, speaking here at the American Society of Retina Specialists conference.
Dr. Fung reported partial results of a study in which 40 patients with subfoveal choroidal neovascularization and central retinal thickness measurements of at least 300 µm were treated with Lucentis. She described the results in the first 30 patients to reach the 3-month follow-up point in the study, called the Prospective OCT Imaging of Patients with Neovascular AMD Treated with Intraocular Lucentis, or PrONTO study.
The study was designed in two phases, Dr. Fung said. In the first phase, patients underwent three injections spaced 1 month apart. After the first two injections, patients returned on days 1, 2, 4 and 7 for optical coherence tomography measurements and on day 14 for visual acuity testing. In the second phase of the study, after the third injection, patients returned once a month for vision and OCT testing. Fluorescein angiography was performed every 3 months.
“We will re-treat with Lucentis only if we see evidence of re-accumulation of fluid on OCT,” she said.
The first 30 patients in the study showed an average gain of 5.5 letters by day 14.
“This continued to improve to 8.5 letters by day 90,” Dr. Fung said. Both mean and median values improved comparably, she said.
“The visual improvement is associated with the rapid decrease in central retinal thickness. On day 1, we see a nearly 50 µm decrease in CRT, and this continues to day 90, where we saw 175 µm on average. Again the median values were comparable,” she said.
Similar results were found in all CNV lesion subtypes, she added.