Treatment Efficacy and Compliance in Patients with Diabetic Macular Edema Treated with Ranibizumab in a Real-Life Setting.

Purpose: To assess real-life efficacy of ranibizumab and treatment compliance of patients with vision loss secondary to diabetic macular edema (DME).

Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in DME patients treated with ranibizumab. Patients were monitored every 4 weeks for visual acuity (VA) and central retinal thickness (CRT) by SD-OCT. All patients received a loading dose of 3 monthly injections followed by retreatments on an as-needed basis. The primary endpoint was the change in VA at M12. Patient compliance to the follow-up and the correlation between the injection number and VA were also investigated. Compliance was compared to that of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) patients.

Results: Seventy-two eyes of 55 consecutive DME patients were included. At baseline, the mean VA was 56.5 letters and CRT was 470 m. At M12, the mean VA was 63.4 letters ( < 0.0001), 31.1% of patients had a VA > 70 letters, the mean VA change was +6.9 letters, and the mean CRT was 361.9 m ( = 0.0001) after a mean number of 5.33 intravitreal injections. In patients who received ≥7 injections, the VA gain and final VA were significantly higher than in patients who received <7 injections. At M12, 25.45% of DME patients were lost to follow-up versus 16.8% of nAMD patients ( = 55).

Discussion/conclusion: Our study confirms the real-life efficacy of ranibizumab in DME at M12 and the need for a large number of injections to achieve better visual outcomes. We also showed a trend to a lower compliance in diabetic versus nAMD patients.