Neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is generally a bilateral condition, in which patients receive anti-VEGF treatments in both eyes at the same time. However, in cases where patients may have additional issues in one eye, such as macular scarring, treatments may have to be spaced out between eyes.

As such, a group of researchers found sequentially treated wet AMD fellow eyes had better visual acuity at baseline and after two years compared with eyes that received treatment at different intervals.

Their study reviewed 6,265 patients’ electronic medical records from the Moorfields AMD database from 2008 to 2018. The investigators then divided the data into three groups: 1,180 sequentially treated eyes, 807 non-sequentially treated eyes and 3,410 unilateral eyes.

For sequentially treated fellow eyes, the study found the mean visual acuity (VA) at baseline was significantly higher, the acuity gain over two years was lower and the proportion of eyes with good VA (70 or more letters) was higher (46%) than the respective first eyes.

The investigation also found non-sequentially treated fellow eyes had similar baseline and VA outcomes as the first eyes. The fellow eye involvement rate was 32% at two years, and the median interval to fellow eye involvement was approximately 71 weeks, the study noted.