At-home monitoring for wet age-related macular degeneration gets high marks
At-home monitoring of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with optical coherence tomography (OCT), a non-invasive imaging test that uses light waves to take cross-section pictures of your retina, cut office visits in half with no deterioration in visual acuity, a small study of 15 patients and 27 eyes showed. After 6 months of daily evaluations, visual acuity did not differ significantly from in-office evaluations before the study. At the same time, the average treatment interval increased from 8.0 to 15.3 weeks. The at-home imaging schedule detected early disease activity and afforded protection for the non-study eye.
“This study demonstrates for the first time treatment experience with home OCT-guided management,” said Lloyd Clark, MD, of Palmetto Retina Center in West Columbia, South Carolina, during the 2023 American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting. “Home OCT was easy for subjects to use, resulting in good compliance and early detection of recurrent and even new disease.”
Clark acknowledged limitations to the study, including the small number of patients and eyes, the nonrandomized nature of the study, treatment variation according to investigator discretion, and use of Snellen visual acuity measurements.
The study was supported by Notal Vision and Clark disclosed a relationship with Notal Vision.
Edited by Miriam Kaplan, PhD
Source: Charles Bankhead, MedPage Today, November 10, 2023; see source article