Significant Treatment Failure With Intravitreous Bevacizumab for Retinopathy of Prematurity

Comment. Children receiving intravitreous bevacizumab therapy as compared with children undergoing retinal laser coagulation were significantly less myopic at 1 year of follow-up. Although the cause for myopization in children treated for ROP has remained unclear so far, the results of our study are in line with previous investigations in which myopization was more pronounced in children randomized for the more invasive cryotherapy than in those who received the less invasive laser therapy. 6 Intravitreous medical therapy for ROP as compared with laser therapy may thus have the following advantages: (1) the possibility of performing the therapy under local anesthesia instead of general anesthesia; (2) the possibility of not destroying the peripheral retina by coagulation; and (3) potentially a lower degree of myopization. Limitations of our study were the small number of included patients, the design as a comparative case series study instead of a randomized trial, and the fact that refractive error can be better determined at a later age. This series provides another premise for a randomized prospective clinical trial.