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Study: PDT may have negative impact on vision in vitelliform lesions
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Photodynamic therapy has no benefit in patients with vitelliform lesions and may actually have an adverse effect on vision, according to a study. Physicians should be careful to distinguish between vitelliform lesions and choroidal neovascularization before administering PDT, the study authors said.
Erdem Ergun, MD, and colleagues studied the effect of verteporfin PDT in eight eyes of seven patients with vitelliform lesions caused by cuticular drusen or adult-onset foveomacular vitelliform dystrophy.
The median visual acuity outcome of all seven patients was not significantly affected by the PDT treatment. However, four eyes of four patients experienced a severe decrease in visual acuity after PDT treatment. Fluorescein angiographic appearance was virtually unchanged in all treated patients, but indocyanine green angiography showed typical PDT-associated reduction of choroidal perfusion in the treatment area, the researchers said.
The researchers noted that the temporal relationship of the vision loss to the PDT suggested that the loss might be an adverse effect of the therapy.
The study is published in the June issue of Retina.