ABSTRACT
Ophthalmology faces many challenges in providing effective and meaningful eye care to an ever-increasing group of people. Even health systems that have so far been able to cope with the quantitative patient increase, due to their funding and the availability of highly qualified professionals, and improvements in practice routine efficiency, will be pushed to their limits. Further pressure on care will also be caused by new active substances for the largest group of patients with AMD, the so-called dry form. Treatment availability for this so far untreated group will increase the volume of patients 2-3 times. Without the adaptation of the care structures, this quantitative and qualitative expansion in therapy will inevitably lead to an undersupply.There is increasing scientific evidence that significant efficiency gains in the care of chronic diseases can be achieved through better networking of stakeholders in the healthcare system and greater patient involvement. Digitalization can make an important contribution here. Many technological solutions have been developed in recent years and the time is now ready to exploit this potential. The exceptional setting during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has shown many that new technology is available safely, quickly, and effectively. The emergency has catalyzed innovation processes and shown for post-pandemic time after that we are equipped to tackle the challenges in ophthalmic healthcare - ultimately for the benefit of patients and society.
ABSTRACT
Several adjunct therapies to the gold standard anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) intravitreal injections have been discussed for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). Low-dose stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) showed the potential to lower the treatment burden by reducing the anti-VEGF treatment frequency at least over 2–3 years but was associated with retinal microvascular abnormalities in a few cases. We report a 6-year follow-up of a case with bilateral nAMD under anti-VEGF treatment which developed multiple polypoid choroidal vasculopathy (PCV) lesions in the eye adjunct treated with low-dose SRT. The fellow eye suffering from nAMD for the same period of time but never been treated with SRT did not show PCV during the long-term follow-up. We hope to increase the awareness of possible choroidal changes such as PCV in similar patients by sharing this report.