Abstract
Purpose :
Recent studies do not support the hypothesis of vascular normalization in eyes receiving intravitreous anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).
In this retrospective study we measured vessel density in patients with AMD in response to anti-(VEGF) treatment using Swept Source Optical Coherence Angiography (OCT-A)
Methods :
The mean age of 20 women and 16 men, was 72,3 (Standard Deviation ± 10,67). All participant were examined using DRI OCT Triton (Topcon, Tokyo, Japan). After quality check only 31 images of 31 eyes were included.
4 patients naive to treatment, 3 patients with single injection, 3 with double injections and 4 with 3 injections as well as 8 previously treated patients with no active AMD were included. The last group consisted of 8 healthy eyes.
Each patient had two 6x6 mm scans. Vessel density was calculated using ImageJ software. Pixel intensity was divided by the area size. No manual corrections were applied for all analyses.
Least Squares Means was calculated using Statistica 10.005 (Statsoft, Kraków, Poland)
Results :
We observed 23 % decrease in vessel density after first injection Figure 1. In group with 2 injections the density level increased up to 3 % compered with the first injection. Density level was also higher in eyes after 3 injections, then in group with only two and one. Patients with a history of AMD had slightly higher vascular density level then those currently undergoing treatment. The difference between patients with a history of AMD and patients currently undergoing treatment was statistically significant (p=0,00813).
Conclusions :
OCT-A images produced by Triton OCT system, provides high-resolution vasculature detail that allowed to measure vascular density.
Our data suggest that vascular density level significantly decrease after first anti-VEGF injection.
The values then increase but are significantly lower than in untreated eyes. Further research is needed to confirm results of this study.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.