Diabetic macular edema is characterised by exudative fluid accumulation in the macula and is the most common form of sight-threatening retinopathy in people with diabetes affecting one in 15 people with diabetes. Intraocular pharmacotherapy with anti-VEGF agents is the standard of care. It was a pleasure to speak with Dr Andreas Pollreisz (Medical University of Vienna, Austria) around the unmet needs in the treatment of DME.
The presentation entitled ‘Faster time to retinal fluid control with faricimab versus aflibercept in patients with DME in the phase 3 YOSEMITE/RHINE trials’ was presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Annual Meeting, May 05-09, 2023
Questions:
- What are the unmet needs in the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME)? (0:15)
Disclosures: Andreas Pollreisz is a consultant for Abbvie, Bayer, Oertli Instruments & Roche and discloses grant/research support from Zeiss Meditec.
Support:Â Interview and filming supported by Touch Medical Media Ltd. Interview conducted by Shanice Allen.
Filmed in coverage of the virtual ARVO 2023.
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Transcript
My name is Andreas Pollreisz. I am a clinician researcher at the Department of Ophthalmology at the Medical University of Vienna.
What are the unmet needs in the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME)?
Diabetic retinopathy is a multifactorial disease and as we all know, diabetic macular edema can occur at any stage of DR. So we know that the pathogenesis of DME involves a lot of angiogenic factors. One of them is VEGF, but there are certainly other factors as well. And there is an inflammatory component, which is not completely addressed by current anti-VEGF monotherapy. So what we know from real world data that we have available is that in many cases, patients do not receive optimal dosing frequencies, which often require frequent injections and also frequent clinic visits for the best functional and anatomical responses. So we as ophthalmologists are aiming for treatments that show better durability but also reduce injection frequencies as well as patient visits to the clinic. These are all measures to reduce the treatment burden.
Subtitles and transcript are autogenerated
