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.