Anti-vegf therapy in diabetic macular oedema patients over four years

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate visual acuity (VA) outcomes of intravitreal
anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in diabetic macular oedema
(DMO). METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, electronic medical
records for all patients undergoing intravitreal injections (IVI) in a
tertiary referral centre between March 2013 and October 2018 were
analysed. Treatment response in terms of visual acuity outcomes were
reported for all eyes over a 4-year observation period. RESULTS: Our
cohort includes 2614 DMO eyes of 1964 patients over 48 months. Cox
proportional hazards modelling identified injection number (hazard ratio
[HR] = 1.18), male gender (HR = 1.13), and baseline VA (HR = 1.09) as
independent predictors to reach a favourable visual outcome of more than
70 Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) letters. Half of our
cohort reached 70 letters 1.9 months after starting anti-VEGF therapy. Of
those that reached 70 letters, 50% fell below 70 by 14.7 months.
CONCLUSION: To date, this is the largest single centre cohort study and
over the longest observation period reporting on real-life outcomes of
anti-VEGF in DMO. We have made an anonymised version of our dataset
available on an open-source data repository as a resource for clinical
researchers globally.