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Title: Retinal Thickness and Age Predict Response to Bevacizumab Treatment: Presented at ARVO
URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/22078E.htm
Doctor's Guide
May 1, 2008

By Micheal Casasnovas

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla -- May 1, 2008 -- Baseline retinal thickness and patient age appear to predict the response to bevacizumab therapy among patients with retinal-vein occlusion, researchers reported here at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO).

Baseline central-retinal thickness and age are significantly predictive factors for the response to bevacizumab treatment in patients with central-retinal-vein occlusion, while baseline visual acuity and sex only show tendency," said Thomas Ach, MD, Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, University of Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.

Dr. Ach and colleagues enrolled 87 patients to analyse the predictive value of age, gender, central-retinal thickness, and best-corrected visual acuity. Forty-seven patients were diagnosed with branch-retinal-vein occlusion, and 40 patients were diagnosed with central-retinal-vein occlusion. Patients also were diagnosed with persistent macular oedema.

Treatment was intravitreal bevacizumab at a dose of 2.5 mg/0.1 mL. Patients underwent ophthalmic examinations, best-corrected visual-acuity tests, and Stratus optical coherence tomography (OCT) before injection and every 6 to 8 weeks after the injection. Patients received repeat injections if macular oedema persisted or recurred as determined by OCT.

Mean follow-up was 33.2 weeks (range 7 to 100 weeks).

Patients who were diagnosed with central-retinal-vein occlusion and had an average retinal thickness of 867 microns at baseline were less likely to have resolution of macular oedema within 6 weeks compared with patients whose retinal thickness averaged 635 microns at baseline (P = .0048), Dr. Ach reported during a poster presentation on August 29.

Patients with central-retinal-vein occlusion whose macular oedema resolved with bevacizumab therapy had an average age of 64.18 years compared with an average age of 71.97 years in those with the same type of occlusion whose macular oedema did not resolve within 6 weeks of the first injection.

When the researchers compared outcomes among patients with branch-retinal-vein occlusion, they were unable to find any correlation with baseline characteristics of visual acuity, retinal thickness, patient age, or gender.

"In contrast to central-retinal-vein occlusion, these factors do not allow doctors to predict short-term treatment response with bevacizumab for patients with branch-retinal-vein occlusion," Dr. Ach noted.


[Presentation title: Predictive Factors in 2.5 mg Bevacizumab Therapy of Macular Edema Due to Retinal Vein Occlusion. Abstract A489]

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