Acute Macular Degeneration Clinical Trial
Official title:
The Accuracy of Home Monitoring for Disease Activity During Maintenance Therapy for Neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration
Currently the best treatment for "wet" macular degeneration involves regular injections of
Ranibizumab (Lucentis). In the initial clinical trials, the drug was injected into the eye
every month. Since then a number of studies have found similar benefits when the drug is
given with a fixed number of injections initially and then with further injections only when
needed. This approach has been adopted in the UK, following recommendation by the National
Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).
Although this approach reduces the expense and risk of un-necessary treatment, it does
require regular hospital assessment of disease activity to determine if a repeat injection is
required or can be deferred. The hospital assessment is time-consuming, inconvenient and the
large number of assessments can cause delays in hospital follow-up.
Using three different assessment criteria to monitor disease activity at home, the
investigators plan to see if home monitoring is as good as hospital assessment. The
investigators have already identified that many patients dislike the lengthy hospital
assessment visit and would welcome the opportunity to do some of the monitoring of disease
activity at home. The investigators have also shown that they understand and can complete
each of the home assessment tests. In this pilot project, the investigators aim to get an
idea of how reliable home monitoring can be in a small sample of just over 30 patients. The
data that the pilot project generates will be used to influence and to help plan a
subsequent, larger, national study to be submitted for funding to the National Institute for
Health Research.
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