Archive \ Volume.13 2022 Issue 2

Comparative Analysis of Intravitreal Ranibizumab versus Laser Therapy for Retinopathy of Prematurity

Ahmed Elabbasy¹, Mona Abdelbaky¹, Hassan Al-Shehri²*, Ilene Padua¹, Ahmed Hamed³, Aladdin Kashlan³, Abdullah Alrobaie⁴, Abdulrahman Albarqi⁴, Ammar Aldawalibi⁴, Amer Ammari¹, Fawaz Kashlan¹

¹Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ²Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ³College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ⁴Department of Ophthalmology, Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The therapeutic effects of intravitreal Ranibizumab injection (IVR) and the efficacy of laser photocoagulation for the treatment of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are compared. The screening criteria for ROP were infants born with less than 32 weeks gestational period and/or weighed less than 1500 grams or unstable clinical course. After ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board, this retrospective study was conducted. The study considered 1315 infants and an observation was made that 36/42 (85.7%) eyes showed regression of ROP in the IVR group whereas 27/27 (100%) eyes that were treated with laser therapy showed regression of ROP (p=0.09). A considerable discrepancy in habituation of ROP in both groups with 12 eyes (28.6%) has been noted which is showing recurrence of ROP in the IVR group compared to 1 eye (3.7%) in the Laser group (P=0.01. In terms of anisometropia and refractive error, both groups made no notable difference. Squint was found remarkably higher in the laser group (29.6%) than in the IVR group (4.8%) (P=0.01). It was found that treating ROP eyes with laser treatment leads to greater improvement in infants than when treated by IVR. Moreover, a significant recurrence of ROP was discovered after IVR treatment in comparison with the laser treatment.

Keywords: Retinopathy, IVR treatment, Ranibizumab, Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)