Brendan Vote, Paul Mitchell, Jagjit Singh Gilhotra,Meagan Walsh, Chad Woodcock, Nicol Kurstjens

Purpose:
Here we describe the visual acuity (VA),central retinal thickness (CRT) and injection frequencyof 938 Australian patients’ enrolled into the ranibi-zumab (RBZ) global observational study, LUMINOUS.

Methods: Nine hundred and thirty eight patientsboth treatment naive (102) and non-treatment naïve(834) to RBZ entered the study between April 2011and March 2012 and were treated according to currentAustralian practice protocols. The primary objectivewas to describe the safety and effectiveness of RBZ inroutine clinical practice and secondly, to describe treat-ment patterns as assessed by overall number of injec-tions, interval between injections and duration oftreatment period.

Results:
Over the first 12 months, 6326 injectionswere performed with a mean of 6.7 (±3.1) per year.Treatment naïve patients had a slightly higher fre-quency with a mean of 7.3 (±3.7) injections whereaspatients previously treated with RBZ had a mean of 6.7(±3.0) injections. Initial visual acuity (VA) for treat-ment naïve patients was 50.2 (±21.5) letters, with anaverage increase of 5.6 (±12.1) letters at 12 months.Patients who were non-treatment naïve maintainedVA at 12 months (?0.9 (±11.9) from a baseline of 63.7(±18.2) letters).

Conclusions:
Ranibizumab was efficacious in treatingboth treatment naïve and treatment non-naïvepatients. The number of injections required by bothgroups is similar to that reported in other real worldstudies and better reflects the current treatment prac-tice in Australia.