[Neovascular age-related macular degeneration under anti-angiogenic therapy : Subretinal fluid is a relevant...

Due to its progressive nature neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) is the most common cause of irreversible vision loss and blindness in people aged 60 or older. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) plays an important role in monitoring this exudative disease. However, prognostic factors for visual rehabilitation under anti-angiogenic therapy are still rare. It was the aim of this study to identify prognostic parameters based on OCT.

In this study 17 patients with nAMD were included and treated with 3 intravitreal ranibizumab injections. Stratus-OCT and Cirrus-OCT imaging were performed to identify prognostic factors. Different OCT parameters, such as the volume of subretinal fluid and the degree of serous retinal detachment in the fovea, were analyzed and correlated with visual acuity (VA).

Baseline VA was an important prognostic factor correlating with final VA at the end of the study. Retinal thickness measured by OCT showed a correlation to VA at the time of examination but not with the final results.. The volume of subretinal fluid (SRFV) however, correlated significantly with VA at weeks 4 and 12. The degree of serous retinal detachment of the fovea did not correlate with retinal function.

Data show that some retinal thickness values correlated to VA in the spectral domain OCT but not in Stratus OCT. In this study VA at baseline and the SRFV were the most important prognostic factors for VA at 3 months.. This demonstrates the important role of SRFV measurements as a relevant prognostic factor in nAMD and encourages more research into the analysis of OCT parameters in order to have a better understanding of the prognosis of individual patients receiving anti-angiogenic therapy for nAMD.