Abstract
Purpose::
To study prospectively whether the peroperative course correlates with visual outcome in patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD) treated with a free autologous retinal pigment epithelium (RPE)-choroid graft after removal of a subfoveal choroidal neovascular (CNV)- membrane. We hypothesized that, with less complications during surgery and subsequently less trauma, the functional results might be better.
Methods::
Participants were patients with exudative AMD treated with a RPE-choroid graft translocation and with a minimal follow-up of 3 months (n = 44) after surgery. Four peroperative variables (removal of CNV-membrane, subfoveal graft insertion, subfoveal manipulation of graft, and presence/absence of subfoveal choroidal bleeding) were graded immediately after surgery, with a final scale of 0 (operation went very well) to 4 (complicated surgery) per patient. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the relation between peroperative course, adjusted for the following variables: preoperative delay (i.e. time between onset of symptoms and surgery), preoperative visual acuity (VA), and the outcome variable: postoperative VA at 3 months after surgery.
Results::
ANOVA as well as ANCOVA analysis failed to reveal a statistically significant correlation between peroperative course and visual outcome at 3 months after surgery.
Conclusions::
The limited number of patients studied may have prevented to confirm our impression that uncomplicated surgery leads to better visual outcome. We continue, however, to try and improve our surgical technique.
Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • vitreoretinal surgery • transplantation