This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Oral steroids resolved macular edema in uveitis patients faster than sub-Tenon's injections
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Macular edema resolved faster after treatment with oral corticosteroids than with sub-Tenon's injections in patients with intermediate uveitis, a study found.
Pradeep Venkatesh, MD, and colleagues at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi used optical coherence tomography to prospectively compare the two steroid delivery methods. The study included 11 patients with unilateral intermediate uveitis treated with posterior sub-Tenon's injections and 11 patients with bilateral uveitis treated with oral steroids.
At 2 weeks follow-up, patients treated with oral steroids showed significant improvements in visual acuity, while patients who received the local injections showed such improvements at 6 weeks.
In addition, foveal thickness as measured by OCT decreased more rapidly among patients treated with oral steroids. These patients showed a 63% decrease in foveal thickness by 3 days follow-up, while patients treated with injections showed a 55% reduction only after 2 weeks.
"A short course of oral steroids may be useful in enabling earlier visual recovery in patients treated with posterior sub-Tenon's injection for unilateral uveitic macular edema," the authors said.
The study is published in the January issue of Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology.