Abstract
Purpose :
To determine whether the choroid vascular index can be predictive of the frequency of intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drug applications.
Methods :
OCT images of 57 patients (76 eyes) with diabetic retinopathy were analyzed before they received anti-VEGF injections. The frequency of anti-VEGF injections was expressed as a function of time by dividing the total injections by the observation period. According to the median number of injections, two groups were created as “low injection” and “high injection” groups. ImageJ/FIJI was utilized for the binarization of images with Niblack method and to draw a choroidal region of interest within 5000µm from the center of the fovea. Stromal choroidal area (SCA), luminal choroidal area (LCA), total choroidal area (TCA), choroidal vascularity index (CVI), stromal area percent (SAP), and luminal to stromal ratio (LSR) were subsequently calculated. Differences between the low and high injection groups in terms of the extracted anatomical parameters of the choroid were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results :
The mean age was 61 ± 13 years and 55.3% of patients were female. The mean number of injections was 6.57 ± 5.78. There were no significant differences between low and high injection groups in SCA (p=0.60), LCA (p=0.74), TCA (p=0.69), CVI (p=0.31), SAP (p=.31), and LSR (p=.31). There were no significant differences in the number of injections per day between younger and older patients (p=0.84).
Conclusions :
The choroidal parameters included in this study were not found to be predictive of the number of anti-VEGF injections per duration that patients with diabetic retinopathy received.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.