This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Periocular injections improved inflammation, visual acuity in most patients
Periocular injections demonstrated effectiveness in treating intraocular inflammation and helped improve reduced visual acuity caused by macular edema in most patients, according to a study.
The retrospective cohort study comprised 914 patients from the Systematic Immunosuppressive Therapy for Eye Diseases Cohort Study who had uveitis and had received one or more periocular corticosteroid injection during follow-up. Researchers evaluated patients’ medical records to measure control of inflammation, improvement of VA to 20/40 or better, improvement of VA loss attributed to macular edema, incident cataract affecting VA, ocular hypertension and need for cataract or glaucoma surgery.
Of the 1,192 eyes reviewed, 286 eyes were categorized as having anterior uveitis, 303 eyes had intermediate uveitis and 324 had posterior or panuveitis.
Within 6 months of the first injection, 72.7% of eyes achieved complete control of inflammation, and VA improved from less than 20/40 to 20/40 or better in 49.7% of eyes, according to the researchers.
For patients in whom macular edema had initially reduced VA to less than 20/40, 33.1% of eyes improved to 20/40 or better at follow-up.
At 12 months after injection, cumulative incidence of one or more visits where patients had an IOP of 24 mm Hg or higher was 34%, and cumulative incidence of patients with one or more visits with an IOP of 30 mm Hg or higher was 15%. Glaucoma surgery was performed in 2.4% of eyes, according to the researchers.
In phakic eyes that were initially 20/40 or better, VA reduction to less than 20/40 was attributable to cataract development in 20.2%, and cataract surgery was performed in 13.8% of eyes within 12 months.
Disclosure: See the study for full list of all authors’ relevant financial disclosures.