If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  More Patients With Macular Degeneration Driving Their Cars After Treatment With Ranibizumab Than With Photodynamic Therapy: Presented at ARVO By Cameron Johnston FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla -- May 5, 2008 -- In a widely publicised trial comparing the use of ranibizumab against photodynamic therapy (PDT), the number of patients who continued driving their cars increased among those treated with ranibizumab while the rate decreased for those who received PDT. Being deprived of the ability to drive a car is one of the most devastating outcomes of age-related macular degeneration. Yet most common measures of how well a person can see, such as corrected or uncorrected visual acuity tests, are poor indicators of how well a person is driving or whether they should be driving at all. To determine the impact of treatment on patient's self-perceived driving abilities, Peter Win, MD, Vitreoretinal Surgeon, Retina Institute of California, Pasadena, California, and colleagues conducted a phase 3, randomised, controlled, double-masked trial. They presented their results here on April 28 at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2008 Annual Meeting. The researchers evaluated 3 groups of patients: 142 who were treated with verteporfin PDT; 139 who were treated with ranibizumab; and a group who received combination therapy but was not discussed in this presentation. Patients all completed the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ25), which consists of 25 questions about how much visual impairment affects activities of daily living. Patients responded to the questionnaire at 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months. Questions on the survey include such items as: Are you still driving? If not, did you give up driving because of your eyesight? How much difficulty do you have driving at night? How much difficulty do you have driving in difficult situations such as rain, snow, or rush-hour traffic? At baseline, 59.9% of patients in the PDT arm were still driving, but this declined to 52% at month 12, and to 48.6% at month 24. By comparison, 65.9% of patients in the ranibizumab arm were driving at baseline, and this increased to 74% at month 12, and to 75.4% at month 24. At baseline, all patients in a subset of 46 patients in the PDT group had visual acuity of 20/50 or worse, compared with 88% of those in the ranibizumab group. However, at month 12, 6.5% of patients in the PDT group and 33% of patients in the ranibizumab group had improved to 20/40, which is a common requirement for a driver's license in most American states. By month 24, there was a net decrease of 8.6 points in the mean NEI-VFQ25 scores among patients who were treated with PDT compared with a net increase of 2 points among patients who were treated with ranibizumab. Dr. Win and colleagues concluded that treatment with ranibizumab might have an important effect on patient-reported vision-related driving functions, and on patients' visual acuity, and this may have a measurable impact on patients' ability as well as on their willingness to drive a car. It may also have an impact on patients' legal ability to obtain a driver's license in many states.
[Presentation title: Self-Reported Perception of Driving Function After Ranibizumab Therapy in Patients With Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Poster A333]
|
