Morphological and functional retinal changes in neovascular age-related macular degeneration treated with intravitreal bevacizumab

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to determine the morphological and functional retinal changes in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) treated with intravitreal bevacizumab 1.25 mg. METHODS: This was a prospective, nonrandomized, interventional study. Eighteen eyes of 18 subjects with nAMD were treated with intravitreal bevacizumab (1.25 mg) injection. Subjects underwent complete ophthalmic evaluation which included visual acuity, slitlamp examination, tonometry, binocular ophthalmoscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT), and MP1 microperimetry before the intravitreal injection and the follow-up at 1 and 3 months. Test of significance such as Chi-squared test, paired ttest and oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA) linear trend were used to compare the pre- and post-anti-VEGF outcomes. Intraclass correlation was done to assess the intra observer variability. RESULTS: Mean retinal sensitivity had increased from 3.77 ± 3.13 dB at baseline to 4.93 ± 2.42 dB at 3 months (P = 0.05). Visual acuity improved from 0.62 ± 0.36 at baseline to 0.52 ± 0.36 at 1 month and 0.48 ± 0.34 at 3-month followup, but overall change was not significant (P = 0.40). There was a significant reduction in central foveal thickness (CFT) from 274.61 ± 117.95 at baseline to 179.83 ± 84.18 at 1 month and 179.00 ± 126.55 at 3-month follow-up (P = 0.013). CONCLUSION: Intravitreal bevacizumab (1.25 mg) injection in nAMD improves retinal function, quantified by retinal sensitivity, scotoma characteristics, fixation stability by MP 1 microperimetry and morphological parameters quantified by CFT in SDOCT. These changes show the effectiveness of treatment with intravitreal bevacizumab in nAMD.