Early CRT monitoring using time-domain optical coherence tomography does not add to visual acuity for predicting visual loss in patients with central retinal vein occlusion treated with intravitreal ranibizumab: A secondary analysis of trial data

PURPOSE: Our primary purpose was to assess the clinical (predictive) validity of central retinal thickness (CRT) and best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) at 1 week and 1 month after starting treatment with ranibizumab for central retinal vein occlusion. The authors also assessed detectability of response to treatment.

METHODS: The authors used data from 325 participants in the CRUISE study, which included measurement of time-domain CRT and BCVA at baseline, 1 week, 1 month, and 6 months postrandomization. Analysis of covariance models were fitted to assess clinical validity, and distributions of change were constructed to assess detectability of response.

RESULTS: There was no evidence that 1-week CRT, and very strong evidence that 1-week BCVA were associated with baseline-adjusted BCVA at 6 months (P = 0.17 and P < 0.001, respectively). There was strong evidence that both 1-month CRT and 1-month BCVA were associated with baseline-adjusted 6-month BCVA (P = 0.005 and P < 0.001, respectively), but simultaneous adjustment found evidence of independent association only for BCVA (P = 0.71 and P < 0.001 for CRT and BCVA, respectively). Detectability of response tended to be higher for CRT than BCVA at 1 week and 1 month but by 6 months these were equivalent for CRT and BCVA.

CONCLUSION: In this study, BCVA monitoring of treated central retinal vein occlusion patients seemed more informative than time-domain optical coherence tomography monitoring.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND), which permits downloading and sharing the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.