Evaluation of short-term prognostic factors of ranibizumab in patients with dabetic macular edema

Abstract Purpose: Study the prognostic factors for short-term visual improvement in pacients treated with ranibizumab (IVR) for diabetic macular edema (DME). Methods: cross-sectional descriptive study in which 41 eletronic medical records of patients who attended in a private medical clinic in Belo Horizonte - Minas Gerais in a period of August / 2016 to May / 2017. It was verified general data and previous history of patients who received consecutive monthly IVR for DME, analyzing sex, age and presence of previous treatment as possible prognostic factors determining the changes in visual acuity measured by the Snellen table after the monthly procedure. Results: In the total sample, 51.2% were female subjects. The mean age was 64.20 ± 7.54 years. Age, previous treatment and gender were not correlated with better visual acuity in any time. Conclusion: The major strategy of DME treatment nowadays is intravitreal injections, which have proved to be an effetive way of visual acuity improvement. However, many patients do not exhibit the expected outcome or are refractory to treatment. Aiming to predict the treatment efficacy in short term - also to provide the patient a reasonable expectation about the outcome - based on prognostic factors, new clinical studies are necessary since there are so few that approach this subject - such an important treatment of a very prevalent disease.