Abstract
Purpose :
It has been well known that metabolic activity of the photoreceptor- RPE complex can be reflected in distinguished autofluorescence patterns of different pathologies of the retina. These patterns can help early disease detection and monitoring of its activity where conventional colour fundus photographs show little if any of these changes. The current study is to correlate visual outcome with pre-treatment fundus autofluorescence in myopic choroidal neovascular membrane.
Methods :
11 eyes from 11 patients were involved in this study with diagnosis of myopic CNV that has been confirmed at the initial visit. Patients' age range was 23-69 with mean age of 47. Patients' baseline BCVA was recorded and FAF were recorded and follow up was four weekly.
Results :
There was an average gain of 19 lettres in patients whether receiving Ranibizumab or Bevacizumab for myopic CNV. The median BCVA for patients before treatment was 64, and the median was 82.75 after first treatment. Subfoveal hypoflourescence on autoflourescence was associated with thickness of more than 300microns in 8 patients, less than 300microns in 2 patients. Hyperflourescence was associated with thickness of less than 300 microns in 1 patient.
Conclusions :
We tried to correlate the autofluorescence patterns in a group of patients with myopic CNV, before and soon after starting first treatment, with BCVA and OCT images. From our findings, we can notice there is improvement in the majority of patients gaining an average of 19 letters whether those received Bevacizumab or Ranibizumab. We can also notice that there is hypofluorescnence on FAF associated with thickness of more than 300 microns in 8 patients, less than 300 microns in 2 patients. Hyperfluorescence was noticed in 1 patient associated with thickness of less than 300 microns. Using a paired t-test, The two-tailed P value equals 0.0009, the difference is considered statistically very significant. We can conclude, therefore, in the majority of patients there is a gain of average of 19 letters on vision chart associated with hypofluorescence on FAF and thickness of more than 300 microns on OCT. Therefore, patients receiving anti-VEGF treatment for myopic CNV could be followed up and visual prognosis could be anticipated from this association.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.