Late, very late groups saw fewer letters than patients in on-time group for two measures of visit adherence
THURSDAY, Feb. 6, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Adherence to randomized clinical trial visits is associated with visual acuity in individuals with neovascular age-related macular degeneration, according to a study published online Feb. 6 in JAMA Ophthalmology.
Meera S. Ramakrishnan, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues recruited individuals with neovascular age-related macular degeneration from 44 clinical centers and quantified the association between adherence to randomized clinical trial visits and visual acuity based on four visit-adherence measures. A total of 1,091 patients had complete visit constancy during the study period. The two-year study protocol required a visit every four weeks for monthly versus as-needed treatments of bevacizumab or ranibizumab.
The researchers found that 90.0 percent of patients were classified as on time, 9.2 percent were late, and 0.8 percent were very late based on the average days between visits. For the longest duration in days between visits (max days), 16.7, 65.6, and 17.7 percent of patients were classified as on time, late, and very late, respectively. In both the average- and max-days groups, the late and very late groups saw fewer letters compared with patients in the on-time group after controlling for covariates.
“It’s important to reframe how we think about this,” a coauthor said in a statement. “Let’s worry less about predicting a specific number of injections a patient needs and more about getting them into the doctor’s office.”
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