More OCT exams may improve QoL in patients with diabetic macular edema

Increasing the number of anti-VEGF injections and frequency of optical coherence tomography (OCT) exams to monitor retinal fluid in patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) improves patient quality of life (QoL), according to a presentation at ARVO 2022.

Researchers collected data from 144 patients with neovascular age related macular degeneration (nAMD) and 445 patients with DME. From baseline to 12 months there was a mean improvement in vision of 4.1±13.3 and of 3.4±19.3 letters in patients with DME and nAMD, respectively.

There was a mean of 7.1 OCTs and 5 injections performed in patients with DME during the 1-year study period. No relevant change was seen in Rasch-transformed QoL scales. There was a clinically relevant improvement in VFQ-25 subscales for distance and near vision in patients with DME. Higher VFQ-25 scores were noted when more frequent OCT scans were performed.

When >3 to ≤6 OCTs were performed (3.5 injections), general health scale scores declined by 2.4. However, when OCTs were >6 to ≤9 (5.3 injections) and >9 (8.3 injections), scores increased by 2.6 and 6.5, respectively.

Reference
Pfeiffer N, et al. Effect of treatment and frequency of OCT monitoring on quality of life in neovascular age related macular degeneration (nAMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME). ALBATROS Data Collection. Presented at: ARVO 2022.