Vanishing pachy-choroid in pachychoroid neovasculopathy under long-term anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy

To investigate the diagnostic value of choroidal thickness in the definition of pachychoroid neovasculopathy (PNV), especially in eyes treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy. Twenty-two consecutive eyes of 11 patients with uni- or bilateral PNV were analyzed. Anti-VEGF t...

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Veröffentlicht in:BMC ophthalmology 2021-06, Vol.21 (1), p.269-269, Article 269
Hauptverfasser: Schworm, Benedikt, Luft, Nikolaus, Keidel, Leonie F, Kreutzer, Thomas C, Herold, Tina R, Priglinger, Siegfried G, Siedlecki, Jakob
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:To investigate the diagnostic value of choroidal thickness in the definition of pachychoroid neovasculopathy (PNV), especially in eyes treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy. Twenty-two consecutive eyes of 11 patients with uni- or bilateral PNV were analyzed. Anti-VEGF treatment was correlated with changes in choroidal thickness on enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography. There were 14 eyes with PNV and 8 non-neovascular partner eyes. Mean age was 64.2 ± 4.0 (range: 60-72), total follow-up was 1.8 ± 0.4 (1-2) years. In PNV eyes, choroidal thickness at baseline was 400 ± 58 (269-485) μm. After two years and 13 anti-VEGF injections on average, a mean reduction of - 39 ± 10 (- 26 to - 56) % to final 241 ± 52 (162-327) μm was observed (p  0.13 for all comparisons). A significant correlation of choroidal thinning and anti-VEGF injection rate was observed at year one (r = - 0.79; R  = 0.63; p = 0.00073) and two (r = - 0.69; R  = 0.48; p = 0.019). While 85.7% of PNV eyes exceeded a pachychoroid threshold of ≥350 μm at baseline, this figure dropped to 21.4% at year one and 0% at year two. In PNV, choroidal thickness significantly decreases with anti-VEGF therapy, resembling a "vanishing pachy-choroid", and thus does not represent a valid long-term diagnostic criterium, especially when differentiating PNV from nAMD.
ISSN:1471-2415
1471-2415
DOI:10.1186/s12886-021-02022-1