Effectiveness of intravitreal ranibizumab for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration in a Canadian retina practice: a retrospective review.

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of intravitreal ranibizumab for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a tertiary care retina practice and compare these results with published efficacy data from randomized clinical trials. DESIGN Nonrandomized, consecutive, single-centre, retrospective chart review analysis. PARTICIPANTS Ninety-four patients (95 eyes) with neovascular AMD. METHODS All treatment-naïve patients with neovascular AMD who received ranibizumab and for whom 1 year of follow-up was available were included in the analysis. The following information was gathered from each patient's chart: age, sex, ocular history, treated eye, duration of symptoms at presentation, subtype of choroidal neovascular membrane, Snellen visual acuity at each visit, number of injections, visits, and optical coherence tomography measurements. RESULTS Subjects had a mean age of 81 (SD 7.11) years. The mean number of injections was 5.1 (SD 2.85) with a mean of 9.4 (SD 2.27) visits in the 12-month period. Overall, there was a gain of 2.88 (SD 24.6) letters in all eyes, and a loss of 2.5 (SD 23.1) letters in patients who met the visual acuity inclusion criteria for the clinical trials. Of the patients who met the inclusion criteria, 75% lost fewer than 15 letters and 11% gained more than 15 letters. CONCLUSIONS Visual outcomes in our study patients compared poorly with the clinical trials. Possibilities for the disparity include gaps in the number and frequency of follow-up visits, patient or doctor assessment fatigue, or gaps in optical coherence tomography utilization and the number of injections administered.