RESUMEN
Five eyes of five patients with polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV) without acute hemorrhagic changes or subretinal proliferative tissue to observe the three-dimensional structures and to demonstrate the nature of these images and their interpretation. The abnormal networks surrounding polypoidal lesions were considered to be abnormal pathological blood vessels. The segmentation analysis of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) has revealed the three-dimensional features of polypoidal lesions and surrounding abnormal blood vessel networks beneath retinal pigment epithelium. The changes of pathological findings of PCV were also detected, including the enlargement of hemorrhagic pigment epithelium detachment (PED). The segmentation analysis is useful to observe PCV lesions from the bird's eye view.
RESUMEN
PURPOSE: To evaluate the benefit of the combination of a single sub-Tenon injection of triamcinolone acetonide (STTA) with photodynamic therapy (PDT) for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Japanese patients. METHODS: The medical records of 111 eyes of 111 patients were reviewed retrospectively. Forty-five eyes underwent combined treatment with STTA and PDT, and 66 eyes underwent PDT alone. Time to vision loss, defined as a change of 0.3 or more logarithm of minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) units, and time to retreatment were evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier survival analyses. Cox regression models were used to estimate the hazard ratios for those end points to investigate clinical risk characteristics. RESULTS: Patients who underwent combined STTA with PDT had a significantly lower risk of retreatment than did those who underwent PDT alone (hazard ratio, 0.59; 95% confidence interval, 0.36-0.99). This beneficial association was found only in patients without polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV) lesions. However, combined treatment with STTA and PDT had no beneficial effect in reducing visual loss when compared with treatment with PDT alone. CONCLUSION: Combined treatment with STTA and PDT had a beneficial effect in reducing retreatment of AMD in Japanese patients. Those who had PCV lesions did not benefit from this additional treatment.