Predictors of functional outcome of antiangiogenic therapy in neovascular age-related macular degeneration

Abstract

Aim.To study predictive factors for functional outcome of aflibercept intravitreal antiangiogenic therapy in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). Material and methods.Thirty-six treatment naive nAMD patients (45 eyes, 26 females and 10 males, with a mean age of 74.4 10.9 years) were included in this study. All patients received 3 monthly aflibercept injections followed by 4 bimonthly aflibercept injections. Demographic characteristics, baseline best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central retinal thickness (CRT), and structural retinal changes on optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans were evaluated for the correlation with BCVA after 10 months follow-up. Results.At the end of the follow-up period, the mean BCVA increased statistically significantly from 31 15 (~0.32) letters at baseline to 37 14 (~0.4) letters (p= 0.003). CRT at baseline and at the end of follow-up was 357 110 and 269 70 m (p 0.001), respectively. Final BCVA correlated statistically significantly with baseline BCVA (r= 0.62,p 0.0001), baseline CRT (r= 0.48,p= 0.001), and disease duration from the appearance of complaints until the therapy start (r= 0.32,p= 0.03). Structural macular changes on the OCT scans were not related to final BCVA (p 0.05) apart from the status of the ellipsoid zone (p 0.001). Final BCVA was statistically significantly lower in males than in females (34.7 14.0 (~0.4) and 45.0 9.2 (~0.63) letters, respectively,p= 0.03). Conclusion.Baseline visual acuity, gender, CRT, disease duration from the appearance of complaints until the therapy start, and status of the ellipsoid zone are predictive for the functional outcome in wet AMD patients.