Short-term outcomes of patients with neovascular exudative AMD: the effect of COVID-19 pandemic
- PDF / 791,659 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 41 Downloads / 154 Views
RETINAL DISORDERS
Short-term outcomes of patients with neovascular exudative AMD: the effect of COVID-19 pandemic Enrico Borrelli 1 & Domenico Grosso 1 & Giovanna Vella 1,2 & Riccardo Sacconi 1 & Marco Battista 1 & Lea Querques 1 & Ilaria Zucchiatti 1 & Francesco Prascina 1 & Francesco Bandello 1 & Giuseppe Querques 1 Received: 24 August 2020 / Revised: 16 September 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Purpose To estimate the impact of delayed care during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the outcomes of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods Consecutive patients with diagnosis of neovascular AMD were consecutively enrolled between March 9, 2020, and June 12, 2020, (during and immediately after the Italian COVID-19 quarantine). During the inclusion (or pandemic) visit (V0), patients received a complete ophthalmologic evaluation, including optical coherence tomography (OCT). Best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and OCT findings from the two preceding visits (V−1 and V−2) were compared with data at V0. Results One-hundred patients (112 eyes) were enrolled in this study. The time interval between following visits was 110.7 ± 37.5 days within V0 and V−1 and 80.8 ± 39.7 days within V−1 and V−2, respectively (P < 0.0001). BCVA was statistically worse at the V0 visit as compared with the immediately preceding (V−1) visit (0.50 ± 0.43 LogMAR and 0.45 ± 0.38 LogMAR at the V0 and V−1 visits, respectively; P = 0.046). On structural OCT, 91 out of 112 (81.2%) neovascular AMD eyes displayed the evidence of exudative disease activity at the V0 visit, while 77 (68.7%) eyes exhibited signs of exudation at the V−1 visit (P = 0.022). No differences in terms of BCVA and OCT findings were detected between the V−1 and V−2 visits. In multiple regression analysis, the difference in BCVA between V0 and V−1 visits was significantly associated with the interval time within these two visits (P = 0.026). Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic-related postponement in patient care proved to be significantly associated with worse short-term outcomes in these patients. Keywords COVID-19 . Retina . Neovascular AMD . Outcome
Introduction Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe decrease in visual acuity among subjects older than 50 years [1]. Severe vision loss in AMD is frequently the result of development of macular neovascularization (MNV) [2, 3]. Exudation from MNV may indeed irreversibly damage This is part of a topical collection on Perspectives on COVID-19 * Giuseppe Querques [email protected] 1
Department of Ophthalmology, University Vita-Salute, IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, Via Olgettina, 60 Milan, Italy
2
Ophthalmology, Department of Surgical, Medical, Molecular Pathology and of Critical Area, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
photoreceptors and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) in neovascular AMD [4]. Treatment of exudative neovascular AMD has been significantly evolved over the past
Data Loading...
