2Professor, MD, The University of Health Sciences, Sultan 2. Abdulhamid Han Training and Research Hospital, Department of Ophthalmology, Istanbul, Turkey DOI : 10.37845/ret.vit.2022.31.19 Purpose: To evaluate the changes of all inner retinal layers in eyes with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) during antivascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) treatments and to compare two different anti-VEGF agents; ranibizumab and a?ibercept.
Materials and Methods: This retrospective, comparative study comprised 40 treatment-naive eyes of 40 patients treated with ranibizumab (20 eyes) or aflibercept (20 eyes) injections for nAMD. Thicknesses of the total retina and inner retinal layers were measured by spectral-domain OCT in the central 1-mm diameter and surrounding 3-mm diameter rings of Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study grid. Changes in each layer and comparison between ranibizumab and aflibercept groups were analyzed statistically during 1-year follow-up.
Results: The ranibizumab group showed 3.85±16.54 letters of increase and the aflibercept group showed 4.20±16.30 letters of increase at the end of 1 year. There was a significant decrease in total retinal thickness in both groups at the end of 1 year (p=0.006 in ranibizumab, p=0.005 in aflibercept). Ganglion cell layer thinning was significant at the end of 3 months, thinning of the inner nuclear layer was significant at the end of one year in both groups (p<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between ranibizumab and aflibercept groups.
Conclusions: The thicknesses of all inner retinal layers diminish one year after anti-VEGF treatment of nAMD in both ranibizumab and aflibercept groups due to therapeutic effect obtained with fluid resorption, but not related to tissue loss. However, there are no statistically significant differences in changes of inner retinal layer thicknesses between two anti-VEGF agents.
Keywords : Anti-vegf, ranibizumab, aflibercept, inner retinal layers, ganglion cell layer