Purpose: To report the clinical course of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) treatment in eyes with pre-existing geographic atrophy (GA).Material and Methods: Multicenter retrospective series. Electronic medical records, clinical notes, and multimodal retinal imaging of patients attending four tertiary referring centers with a diagnosis of unilateral CNV in the context of a pre-existing diagnosis of GA were included. GA was assessed on multimodal retinal imaging including spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) scan with simultaneous near-infrared (NIR) reflectance imaging (OCT Spectralis, Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany) which was acquired at baseline and every follow-up visit. GA area was measured in treated eyes and fellow eyes using NIR.Results: Fifty-four eyes from 27 patients (23 females, mean age 80.89 ± 7.5) were included. The mean number of injections in the treated eyes was 5.52 ± 1.9 by month 12. From baseline to month 12, stabilization of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and a significant decrease (P = .002) of central macular thickness (CMT) in the treated eyes were observed; there was a slight worsening of BCVA (-2 ETDRS letters) and a non-significant change (P = .4) of CMT in the fellow eyes. GA significantly increased in both treated and untreated eyes (P < .001 and P < .001, respectively) with a similar absolute increase (+2.68 mm2 and +2.59 mm2, respectively) and growth rate (0.4 and 0.34, respectively).Conclusions: In our study anti-VEGF treatment for CNV in eyes with pre-existing GA was effective in terms of decrease of exudative changes and stabilization of VA by month 12. A similar growth rate of GA between treated and untreated eyes does not support a causal relationship between anti-VEGF treatment and GA progression in this subset of patients. Further studies with a longer follow-up are mandatory to confirm these results.
Keywords: Age-related macular degeneration; anti-vascular endothelial growth factor; choroidal neovascularization; geographic atrophy; macular atrophy.