Abstract
Purpose: :
To report short-term outcomes of treatment with intravitreal bevacizumab in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration.
Methods: :
Thirty-three consecutive patients from a single office had documented decrease in vision from neovascular macular degeneration based on the presence of subretinal fluid, intraretinal cyst(s), and/or pigment epithelial detachment(s) by optical coherence tomography (OCT), and leakage on fluorescein angiography. All patients received intravitreal injections of 0.1mL (1.25mg) of bevacizumab every month for three months. Outcomes were pretreatment and follow-up (3 months) central macular thickness (CMT) by OCT and Snellen visual acuity converted to the logMAR scale. Statistical analyses with t-test and Pearson correlations were performed.
Results: :
There were twenty-three women and ten men. Mean age was 80 years. The mean pretreatment vision was 1.11 +/- 0.63 logMAR (20/60 to 20/1100 Snellen). Mean pretreatment CMT was 273 +/- 74 µm. Thirteen of 33 patients showed improvement in vision (as defined as at least halving of the visual angle) at 3-month follow-up. The mean post-treatment vision was 0.75 +/- 0.47 logMAR (20/40 to 20/330 Snellen). In 25/33 patients, the CMT improved greater than 10% from baseline measurements. There was significant reduction in CMT (t-test; p=0.0001) and significant improvement in vision (t-test; p=0.0101). Furthermore, there was minimal correlation between pretreatment CMT and visual acuity, and post-treatment CMT and visual acuity. (Pearson correlation coefficient; initial r=0.0705; final r=0.1767).
Conclusions: :
Short-term treatment with bevacizumab resulted in improvement in CMT and visual acuity in 25/33 patients. However, correlations between the two outcomes were minimal.
Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • injection • visual acuity