Safety of ranibizumab in routine clinical practice: 1-year retrospective pooled analysis of four European neovascular AMD registries within the LUMINOUS programme

PURPOSE: Evaluation of 1-year safety profile of intravitreal ranibizumab 0.5 mg in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (NV-AMD) within routine clinical practice. METHODS: The LUMINOUS programme comprises a prospective observational study assessing ranibizumab ‘real-world’ safety and clinical effectiveness across licensed indications worldwide and an annual retrospective pooled safety analysis from completed NV-AMD ranibizumab registries. 1-year data from four European registries are available. This retrospective pooled safety analysis assessed 1-year incidence rates for safety events of particular interest (key ocular or systemic events possibly related to the injection procedure or vascular endothelial growth factor inhibition) together with treatment exposure. Patients were treated according to local protocols within the ranibizumab licence. RESULTS: Data of 4444 patients from registries in Germany (n=3470), the Netherlands (n=243), Belgium (n=260) and Sweden (n=471) were retrospectively pooled. Between 70.4% and 84.4% of enrolled patients completed 1 year of follow-up. Most frequent overall ocular events of particular interest were retinal pigment epithelial tears (27 patients; <1%) and intraocular pressure-related events (12 patients; <0.3%). Most frequent non-ocular event of particular interest was stroke (19 patients; 0.4%); annual incidence of stroke was low across all registries (0.0–0.5%). CONCLUSIONS: Ranibizumab demonstrated favourable 1-year safety profile for NV-AMD in this routine clinical practice sample, consistent with previous reported trial data. Additional data from a larger patient population are needed to better describe the long-term safety profile of ranibizumab in routine clinical practice and further evaluate risk for infrequent but serious events in ‘real-life’ settings. The 5-year LUMINOUS prospective observational study will address this need.