Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography and Visual Outcome after Intravitreal Ranibizumab Injection in Neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration

1. Un Chul Park¹
2. Hyeong Gon Yu^1,2

¹Department of Ophthalmology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
²Medical Research Center, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between visual function and retinal morphologic change analyzed with spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) after intravitreal ranibizumab injection.

Methods: In consecutive patients with a new diagnosis of previously untreated subfoveal neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), three monthly intravitreal injections of ranibizumab was performed. Retinal morphologic parameters including central retinal thickness, thickness of choroidal neovascularization (CNV), height of pigment epithelial detachment (PED) and subretinal fluid (SRF) were measured with calipers on the SDOCT image. Changes in logarithm of the minimal angle of resolution (logMAR) visual acuity and retinal morphologic parameters from baseline to three months after treatment were analyzed.

Results: Forty-six patients were included in this study. At three months after ranibizumab treatment, mean logMAR visual acuity significantly improved from 0.73 at baseline to 0.55 (P < 0.001) and four SDOCT retinal morphologic parameters decreased significantly. Visual acuity change was modestly correlated only with decreased height of SRF (r = 0.333, P = 0.024) and decreased thickness of CNV (r = 0.300, P = 0.043), but not with height of PED (r = 0.175, P = 0.245) and central retinal thickness (r = -0.011, P = 0.942)

Conclusions: After ranibizumab treatment in neovascular AMD patients, improvement in visual acuity was more consistent with decrease in SRF height and CNV thickness rather than decrease in central retinal thickness.