Home monitoring system assists early detection of nAMD
Early detection of neovascular age-related macular degeneration improved when patients used an at-home monitoring system, according to a review published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Investigators report this system may provide significant benefits to patients with dry AMD.
“The incidence of conversion from dry to neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) suggests that frequent monitoring of eyes with intermediate AMD would be optimal,” Allen Ho, MD, of Thomas Jefferson University, and colleagues wrote. “However, bringing a large, older population into clinics for monitoring visual and anatomic changes can be difficult for both the patient and the caregivers, particularly given current safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. One possible solution to address these difficulties is at-home self–monitoring.”
Ho and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of medical records from the Notal Vision Diagnostic Clinic in Manassas, Virginia, of all patients with confirmed conversion from intermediate AMD to nAMD during their participation in a ForeseeHome remote monitoring system program administered between October 2009 and September 2018.
A diagnosis of immediate dry AMD and a best corrected visual acuity of at least 20/60 in any eye that was prescribed served as inclusion criteria. The study comprised 8,991 patients in which a total of 13,930 eyes were tested. The mean age of the patients was 75 years, and most were women (65%). The final analysis showed 306 eyes had converted from intermediate AMD to nAMD.
Sixty-nine percent of the conversions were found after an alert from the ForeseeHome system, while the other 31% was identified at a routine visit.
Ho and colleagues found that 81% of participants in the ForeseeHome group maintained a visual acuity of 20/40 or better at conversion, compared with 34.3% of identified eyes from the IRIS registry dataset using traditional, routine office visits.
“This real-world data analysis confirms that the use of ForeseeHome provides a significant benefit to patients as a means of increasing the early detection of wet AMD when vision is good,” Ho said in a press release about the study. “ForeseeHome can be a useful strategy to monitor at-risk intermediate AMD and help protect vision.”
Collapse
Ho A, et al. J Clin Med. 2021;doi:10.3390/jcm10071355
Read more about