Purpose: To investigate the 6-month safety profile and clinical outcomes of intravitreal bevacizumab for treating subfoveal choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Methods: We performed a prospective nonrandomized interventional study of 40 consecutive patients (40 eyes) with subfoveal CNV due to AMD. Patients underwent standard ophthalmic examination, optical coherence tomography, and fundus fluorescein angiography. All patients were administered one or more intravitreal injections of bevacizumab (1.25 mg) as primary therapy. Outcomes were also analyzed in subgroups based on lesion type (classic or occult) and lesion size (< or =3000 microm or >3000 microm).
Results: At the 6 months' follow-up, mean best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) improved from 20/160 to 20/100 (P = 0.014), and the mean contrast sensitivity improved from 0.38 to 0.62 (P = 0.001). The mean greatest linear diameter and mean central macular thickness significantly decreased from 3.79 mm to 2.4 mm (P = 0.0001) and from 438.5 microm to 363 microm (P = 0.0001), respectively. Visual acuity gain of 15 letters or more was seen in 20% of patients, and the gain was more in the small-lesion subgroup (31.5%) than in the large-lesion subgroup (9.5%). No significant adverse effects were observed.
Conclusion: Intravitreal bevacizumab is a safe and effective modality for treatment of CNV secondary to AMD. A significant improvement in BCVA with intravitreal bevacizumab was observed for all lesion types.