PDT can help deter further reading acuity losses

For patients with age-related macular degeneration, photodynamic therapy can help prevent additional distance and reading acuity losses, but patients need to be made aware that reading acuity cannot be fully regained, a group of German researchers said.

Ilse Krebs and colleagues studied 60 eyes of 52 patients with predominantly classic subfoveal neovascularization due to AMD. All patients underwent PDT for treatment. Follow-up was at 6 weeks, 3 months and then every 3 months after therapy.

After 18 months of therapy, more than half of the patients had gained reading acuity (53.3%). Of those, 18.7% had gained more than three levels. Of the overall group, 16.7% had lost more than three levels of reading acuity, 23.3% had lost less than three levels, and 6.7% remained unchanged.

The majority of eyes lost less than three lines of distance acuity (81.7%), and 78.3% did not show an increase in the mean defect of central visual field.

“The baseline reading acuity was poor and the patients should be aware of the fact that loss of reading acuity cannot be regained even after successful PDT,” the researchers said.

The study is published in the May/June issue of Ophthalmologica.