purpose : to assess the macular and choroidal alterations using optical coherence tomography imaging at baseline and one month after receiving intravitreal antivascular growth factor (anti-VEGF) (ranibizumab) therapy in patients who had diabetic macular edema .
Methods: This was a prospective clinical study which was conducted on twenty eyes with type 2 diabetes with clinically significant macular edema . The intravitreal injection (IVI) of ranibizumab 0.3 mg was administered to the patients (0.05 mL). Prior to the injection and one month later, the central macular thickness, subfoveal choroidal thickness , choroidal thickness 500 m temporal and nasal to fovea were all assessed by SD-OCT.
Results: Postoperatively, the mean nasal, subfoveal and temporal choroidal thickness were 175.7±34.55, 185.6±29.13 and 183.9±34.62µm respectively. There was a statistically significant change in the best corrected visual acuity BCVA (p =0.04), the mean preoperative BCVA was 0.875±0.202 while the mean postoperative BCVA was 0.76 ± 0.22. The postoperative BCVA had a statistically significant (p= 0.03) negative correlation with the retinal thickness (r= -0.242), while it didn't have a significant correlation with the nasal, subfoveal and temporal choroidal thickness (p= 0.275, 0.248 and 0.343) respectively.
Conclusion: Injection of LUCENTIS® resulted in a decrease in choroidal thickness, which is a reflection of the impact LUCENTIS® had on the choroidal vasculature. There was a substantial difference between the BCVA before injection and the BCVA one month after it, and this difference had a clear link to the thickness of the retina but not the thickness of the choroids.