Characteristics of macular edema in behcet disease after intravitreal bevacizumab injection

Purpose: to investigate the effect of intravitreal bevacizumab (ivb) injection on macular edema (me) secondary to behcet's disease. methods: this prospective case series included 15 patients with bilateral me due to behcet's disease. intravitreal bevacizumab was injected into the more severely involved eye; the contralateral eye was evaluated as the control. patients were followed up with comprehensive ocular examination,optical coherence tomography,and fluorescein angiography (fa) for a minimum of 6 months by a single ophthalmologist. results: patients with a mean age of 30.6 ± 7.4 years received a mean number of 3.3 ivb injections during the 6 months. the mean preinjection vision was 0.6 ± 0.3 and 0.4 ± 0.4 logmar in the case and control groups,respectively,with no significant improvement at 6 months. mean central foveal thickness was 375.3 ± 132.1 and 307.2 ± 84.5 μm in the case and control groups,respectively,and these changed to 401 ± 199.9 (p = 0.65) and 307.7 ± 82.8 μm (p = 0.73) at month 6,respectively. a statistically nonsignificant improvement in me was observed during the first 3 months in the case group. however,it did not persist up to month 6 on an as-needed basis. ivb injections caused a disproportionate decrease in the thickness of macular subfields. a reduction in disc leakage was observed on fa (p = 0.058). logistic regression analysis revealed no statistically significant predictive factor for an improvement in visual acuity (va) and a reduction in foveal thickness. conclusion: during a 6-month period,ivb injections based on an as-needed protocol provided no statistically significant improvement in va and me.