Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluate the effect of epiretinal membranes (ERMs) on intra-vitreal (IV) anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injection for Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) treatment.
Methods :
Sixty eyes of 60 patients with DME were divided into two group either the DME with ERM (DME-ERM) or the DME without ERM (DME) based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. Each eyes treated by IV anti-VEGF according to PRN protocol. The central macular thickness (CMT) and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) changes before and after the treatment were compared between two groups. The results were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test, Wilcoxon test, Chi-square test, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.
Results :
DME-ERM consist of 37 eyes and DME had 23 eyes. The mean age was 60.43 and 64.04 years in DME and DME-ERM respectively.( p=0.231) The average follow-up time was 16.92 and 21.74 month in DME and DME-ERM respectively (p=0.507). The mean age and follow-up period were similar in two groups. The mean CMT was 401.41 and 414.74 μm before treatment and 348.08 and 330.17 μm after treatment in DME and DME-ERM respectively, which were statistically insignificant (p=0.102, p=0.927). Even the CMT decrement with the treatment was significant in each group, amount of the reduction was higher in DME-ERM (84.57 u) than DME (53.32) (p= 0.032). Even the initial BCVAs were not different (0.39 and 0.68 Log MAR in DME and DME-ERM respectively) and last BCVA was significantly lower in DME-ERM than DME (0.76 and 0.37 Log MAR respectively), the mean changes in BCVAs with the treatment (-0.027 in DME and 0.086 DME-ERM) in were not different between groups (p=0.614).
Conclusions :
The presence of ERM does not decrease the effect of IV anti-VEGFs in terms of reducing CMT in DME and does not significant negative effect on visual improvement.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Imaging in the Eye Conference, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 26-27, 2019.