Effect of intravitreal injections due to neovascular age-related macular degeneration on retinal nerve fiber layer thickness and minimum rim width: a cross sectional study

Purpose The present study tested the hypothesis that repeated anti-VEGF injections are associated with reduced retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and minimum rim width (MRW) of the optic nerve head.

Patients and methods Sixty-six patients with a history of intravitreal injections due to neovascular age-related macular degeneration were included.

RNFL and MRW were measured using optical coherence tomography (Spectralis OCT, Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany).

Results Mean global RNFL was 90.62 μm and both RNFL as well as MRW significantly decreased with advanced age ( p  = 0.005 and p  = 0.019, respectively).

Correlating for the number of injections, no significant impact on RNFL was found globally ( p  = 0.642) or in any of the sectors.

In contrast, however, global MRW was significantly reduced with increasing numbers of intravitreal injections ( p  = 0.012).

The same holds true when adjusted for the confounding factor age (RNFL p  = 0.566 and MRW p  = 0.023).

Conclusion Our study shows that repeated intravitreal injections due to choroidal neovascularization seem to have a deleterious effect on MRW but not on RNFL.

This suggests that MRW is a more sensitive marker than RNFL for evaluating the effect of frequent intravitreal injections on the optic nerve head since it seems to be the first structure affected.