Mortality of patients under anti-VEGF therapy at a large tertiary ophthalmic hospital

Abstract

Purpose : With ageing populations, age-related diseases such as macular degeneration are becoming more prevalent and more individuals may be starting treatment at an older age. In this retrospective study, we report the age of a cohort of patients that have died after starting intravitreal therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), and the average number of injections they received.

Methods : The Moorfields Eye Hospital Electronic Medical Record system was queried for patients that had received at least 1 intravitreal anti-VEGF injection for nAMD and had later died. The age on the date of the first injection, age at death, and the mean number of injections received were recorded. Descriptive statistics were carried out using Excel version 15.

Results : Of the Moorfields Eye Hospital dataset, 1078 patients (19%) of the cohort of 5614 had received intravitreal therapy for nAMD have died over the observation period of 10 years. At commencement of treatment, the mean (SD) age was 83.6 (±7.2) years. The mean (SD) age of death was 86.8 (±7.3) years. Hence, the mean (SD) number of years from receiving the first injection to death was 3.2 (±2.1) years. The eyes in this cohort had received a mean (SD) number of 10.5 (±9.3) injections.

Conclusions : Compared to the 10-year standardised mortality rate (2007-2016) of 10% in the UK reported by the Office for National Statistics, the percentage of patients that have died in our AMD cohort is higher. This reflects previous studies that have found higher mortality in patients with AMD than those without, suggesting a link between ocular and systemic disease.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.