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Retinal sensitivity potentially useful in evaluating anti-VEGF treatment of wet AMD
Measuring retinal sensitivity in patients treated with intravitreal ranibizumab for neovascular age-related macular degeneration may assist with evaluating the treatment’s effectiveness, according to a study.
The prospective, interventional case series included 42 eyes of 39 patients with neovascular AMD. All eyes were treated with 0.5 mg intravitreal Lucentis (ranibizumab, Genentech) once a month for 3 months. Treatment continued as needed.
Best corrected visual acuity, microperimetry and optical coherence tomography were evaluated at baseline and at 3, 6 and 12 months following treatment.
Patients were categorized as having a predominantly or purely classic, minimally classic or occult choroidal neovascular membrane.
Mean retinal sensitivity of the central 12° area increased from 4.89 ± 3.1 dB at baseline to 9.82 ± 2.1 dB at month 12 (P = .01). Absolute scotoma points decreased from 11.3 ± 3.2 at baseline to 5.9 ± 2.4 at month 12 (P = .01).
Subgroup analysis showed that increase in mean retinal sensitivity, decrease in absolute scotoma size, improvement in BCVA and improvement in central macular thickness improvement did not differ significantly among the groups, the study authors said.