Fixed Quarterly Dosing of Aflibercept after Loading Doses in Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Chinese Eyes

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the success rate of planned fixed quarterly aflibercept injections after three loading doses (QDA3L) to achieve stability without recurrence in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) at a tertiary eye centre. A retrospective study was conducted over five years (2017–2021) by including all consecutive cases of nAMD treated with three initial aflibercept injections four weeks apart, followed by planned injection appointments every 12 to 16 weeks starting from week 20. The primary endpoint was to determine the proportion of patients who maintained disease inactivity at week 52 and week 104. A total of 40 eyes of 40 patients were included. The overall mean age was 80.8, with a male preponderance. The overall success rate in our study population was 52.9% and 53.6% at week 52 and week 104, respectively. The fovea remained dry at 85.3% at week 52 and 82.1% at week 104, and 85.3% and 85.7% of subjects lost fewer than 15 ETDRS letters at week 52 and week 104, respectively. While this study does not suggest the superiority of this regimen, the success and failure rates obtained in our study can be used in the counselling process for this particular fixed treatment regimen for nAMD.