[Short-term experience of intravitreal brolucizumab in treatment of diabetic macular edema].

Purpose: This study examines the efficacy and safety of brolucizumab in the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME) in real clinical practice in the Russian Federation.

Material And Methods: The study included 14 consecutive treatment-naïve DME patients, among them 7 males and 7 females (21 eyes in total) with mean age of 65.1±8.0 years. Patients underwent standard ophthalmological examination and multimodal imaging, including optical coherence tomography. All patients received intravitreal injections of brolucizumab every 6 weeks. A total of 73 injections were performed. A data analysis was performed for 10 eyes of 10 patients 6 months after initiation of the treatment.

Results: After 4 injections of brolucizumab, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) increased statistically significantly from 35.8±13.7 to 41.5±11.9 ETDRS letters (=0.03), central retinal thickness (CRT) and macular volume (MV) decreased from 411.5±107.4 to 280.2±64.6 microns (=0.014) and from 7.39±0.92 to 6.16±7.37 mm (=0.0006), respectively. The average gain of visual acuity was 5.7±7.0 letters, average decrease of CRT was -131.3±91.2, and average decrease of MV was -1.21±0.75 mm. There were no adverse events associated with intraocular inflammation.

Conclusion: Intravitreal injections of brolucizumab provide significant anatomical and functional improvement to DME patients in real clinical practice with results comparable to that of randomized clinical trials.