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Author Spotlight: Overcoming Anti-VEGF Resistance Through Advanced Vascular Morphology Assessment in Choroidal Neovascularization
Published on: August 11, 2023
SYSTEMIC BETA-BLOCKERS IN NEOVASCULAR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION
Anastasia Traband1, James A Shaffer, Brian L VanderBeek
1*Department of Ophthalmology, Scheie Eye Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; †Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and ‡Leonard Davis Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Purpose:
To evaluate whether oral beta-blockers (BBs) are associated with a decreased number of intravitreal injections in patients with incident neovascular age-related macular degeneration.
Methods:
A retrospective cohort study of subjects with a new diagnosis of neovascular age-related macular degeneration was conducted using a medical claims database from a large national US insurer. Two cohorts were created for comparison consisting of patients with regular use of BBs or calcium channel blockers. The main outcome measured was the difference in the mean number of intravitreal injections administered between the two cohorts.
Results:
After inclusion and exclusion criteria, 239 BB and 155 calcium channel blocker subjects remained for analysis. Univariate analysis revealed that the mean number of injections in the BB cohort was 6.43 (95% confidence interval [CI] 5.90-6.95) versus 6.55 (95% CI 5.85-7.25) in the calcium channel blocker cohort (P = 0.78). After multivariate adjustment, the mean number of injections in the BB group was 6.32 (95% CI 5.77-6.87) versus 6.71 (95% CI 6.02-7.40) in the calcium channel blocker group. The overall difference between the 2 groups was -0.39 (95% CI difference -1.29 to 0.51; P = 0.40).
Conclusion:
The use of oral BBs is not associated with a decreased number of intravitreal injections in incident neovascular age-related macular degeneration patients.
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