6-month outcomes of intravitreal faricimab injection for neovascular age-related macular degeneration and their relationships with clinical findings: a multicentre cohort study from the J-CREST.

Background/aims: This study aimed to investigate the outcomes of intravitreal faricimab (IVF) injection for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and their relationships with clinical findings.

Methods: At 14 sites, we retrospectively examined the 6-month treatment outcomes of 186 eyes that underwent IVF for treatment-naïve nAMD or nAMD previously treated except for >3 months before the baseline.

Results: Visual acuity and central retinal thickness (CRT) significantly improved at 1, 3 and 6 months after treatment (p<0.001, respectively). At 3 or 6 months, 151 eyes (81.2%) exhibited dry macula. The dry macula rate in the treatment-naïve group (85.7%) was significantly higher than the previously treated group (71.7%, p=0.022). Eyes with pretreatment submacular haemorrhage (SMH) had a significantly higher rate of dry macula (93.9%) than those without (78.4%, p=0.048). Eyes with pretreatment subretinal fluid had good final visual acuity, but poor visual acuity was observed in those with intraretinal fluid (IRF), subretinal hyper-reflective material (SHRM), SMH or hard exudates. However, a similar tendency was also observed at baseline. CRT improvement was good in the eyes with pretreatment IRF, pigment epithelial detachment, SHRM and SMH, although these eyes had higher CRT at the baseline.

Conclusion: IVF treatment for nAMD was associated with improvements in visual acuity and CRT over 6 months. Eyes presenting with SMH showed a higher rate of achieving a dry macula. This result indicates that faricimab may be useful in treating patients with nAMD and SMH. Given the retrospective, non-randomised design, however, these findings should be interpreted cautiously and viewed as hypothesis-generating rather than definitive.