Background: To investigate baseline MNV characteristics in Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) and its impact on therapeutic needs and visual acuity after 5 years in initially therapy-naïve eyes. Methods: A retrospective study of 43 therapy-naïve eyes with neovascular AMD (nAMD). OCTA was performed at baseline and all eyes were observed for 5 years. MNV architecture was characterized by area, total vessel length, flow density and fractal dimension. These variables were tested for correlation with the number of administered intravitreal injections (IVIs) and best-corrected visual outcome (BCVA) after 5 years of treatment. Results: Mean follow-up time was 4.97 ± 0.21 years. Area and total vessel length of MNVs were significantly associated with a higher number of administered IVIs after 5 years (p 0.05). Conclusions: Specific features of MNV architecture such as area, total vessel length and flow density can predict long-term treatment requirement and visual outcome. Further studies using deep learning algorithms are necessary to explore the usage of these findings in daily practice.
Grün et al. (Sun,) studied this question.