Research suggests overexpectations about drug therapy may cause some patients with AMD to stop treatment

MedPage Today (5/7, Susman) reported that, according to a study presented at a vision research conference, “expecting too much from injections of drugs such as bevacizumab (Avastin) may be one reason patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) give up on therapy.” For the study, researchers from the Hospital Regional de Sao Jose in Santa Catarina, Brazil “reported on treatment with bevacizumab in 82 patients with” AMD, “24 of whom decided to interrupt the therapy.” The team was “able to determine the causes for interruption in 19 of those individuals.” Specifically, “eight of the patients thought that visual results were poor,” and “five complained about lack of information about the need for follow-up visits.” Meanwhile, “three patients stopped the treatments because of comorbidities, and the other three mentioned difficulties in booking appointments or traveling for treatment.” The investigators “noted that 14 of the patients who discontinued treatment actually had shown some improvement in visual acuity,” but “the improvement that was expected by the patients was not achieved.” The authors concluded that patients need to know that “vision improvement” will not “happen in everyone.”