Abstract
Purpose :
The purpose of the study is to analyze the long term visual acuity outcomes for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with every 8 week dosing of maintenance bevacizumab injection after an initial monthly series of injections.
Methods :
This was a retrospective analysis of visual acuity data of 37 eyes of 33 patients treated with every 8 week maintenance bevacizumab injections for neovascular AMD with at least 16 months of follow up by a sole practitioner. Monthly injections were followed by every 8 week injections for the remainder of the time the patient was managed. Eyes were selected by obtaining the records of all patients in the year 2012 and 2011 with the ICD-9 code of wet age-related macular degeneration by a sole practitioner. Inclusion criteria included new diagnosis of neovascular AMD, no prior treatment for AMD, at least 1.5 year follow up, and maintenance bevacizumab injections of every 8 weeks without extension past 8 weeks. Injection number 11, 17, and 23 were used to estimate 12 month, 24 month, and 36 month time points.
Results :
Visual acuity data of 37 eyes of 33 patients was analyzed. Mean follow up time was 3.4 years and mean number of injections per eye was 24.5. Improvement in visual acuity of 15 letters or more was seen in 43% of eyes at roughly 12 months (n=37) 41% of eyes at 24 months (n=32) and 44% of eyes at 36 months (n=25). Prevention of the loss of 15 letters or more was seen in 97% of eyes at 12 months, 94% of eyes at 24 months and 92% of eyes at 36 months. Average letters gained from baseline at 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months were 16, 13, and 12.5 respectively.
Conclusions :
Every 8 week maintenance bevacizumab injections for neovascular AMD provides long-term, sustained gains in visual acuity over a three year period comparable to recent reports with ranibizumab.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.