Impact of Anti-VEGF Treatment and Patient Characteristics on Vision Outcomes in Neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration: Up to 6-Year Analysis of the AAO IRIS® Registry.

Purpose: To evaluate anti-VEGF treatment patterns and the influence of patient demographic and clinical characteristics on up to 6-year vision outcomes in neovascular age-related macular degeneration.

Design: Retrospective, multicenter, noninterventional registry study with up to 6 years of follow-up.

Participants: A cohort of 254 655 eyes (226 767 patients) with first anti-VEGF injection and at least 2 years of follow-up; 160 423 eyes had visual acuity (VA) data.

Methods: Anonymized patient data were collected in the United States through the IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight).

Main Outcome Measures: Changes in VA from baseline; frequency of and gaps between intravitreal anti-VEGF injections; treatment discontinuations; switching anti-VEGF agents; and influence of baseline clinical and demographic characteristics on VA.

Results: After a mean VA increase of 3.0 ETDRS letters at year 1, annual decreases led to a net loss from baseline of 4.6 letters after 6 years. Patients with longer follow-ups had better baseline and follow-up VA. From a mean of 7.2 in year 1 and 5.6 in year 2, mean injections plateaued between 4.2 to 4.6 in years 3 through 6. Treatment was discontinued in 38.8% of eyes and switched in 32.3%. When adjusting for differences at baseline, every additional injection resulted in a 0.68 letter improvement from baseline to year 1; thus, multiple injections in a year have the potential to be clinically meaningful. Older age, male gender, Medicaid insurance, and not being treated by a retina specialist were associated with a higher likelihood of vision loss at year 1. Of the patients, 58.5% lost ≥ 10 letters VA at least once during follow-up, with 14.5% of patients experiencing sustained poor vision after a median of 3.4 years.

Conclusions: After modest mean VA improvement with intravitreal anti-VEGF injections at year 1, patients netted a loss of VA by year 6. Injection frequency decreased over time, and this was paired with a relatively high rate of discontinuation. Modeling suggested that more frequent injections were associated with better VA. Difficulty with continuous adherence to frequent intravitreal injections may have contributed to undertreatment resulting in less-than-optimal vision outcomes.

Financial Disclosures: Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.