Dear Editor,
We thank Mennel et al. and Duker et al. for their interesting
comments regarding our article.
Mennel et al. make some interesting points on the immediate
structural changes that occur after photodynamic therapy (PDT), a topic
that we felt was outside the scope of our study. We agree that the short-term and long-term changes after treatment are important and need to be
taken into account in future studies on patients undergoing PDT.
We are grateful to Dr’s Duker and Witkin for pointing out the article
by Uchino and colleagues [1]. Our patients were older (mean 76 yrs [range
59- 94]) than those reported by these authors (mean 52.3 yrs). Uchino et
al. had 20 patients in the same age group and only 2 patients were above 70
years of age. Both these had a complete posterior vitreous detachment
(PVD). All our patients had associated pathology and majority had
undergone PDT, all of which may have influenced the outcome. While the
finding of vitreo-macular attachment may be more common in normal eyes
(>50%), our study [2] suggests that the incidence may be may be lower
in patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (35.7%).
References
[1] Uchino E., A. Uemura, N. Ohba. Initial stages of posterior
vitreous detachment in healthy eyes of older persons evaluated by optical
coherence tomography. Arch Ophthalmol. 2001; 119:1475-1479.
[2] Sahni J, Stanga P, Wong D, Harding S. Optical coherence
tomography in photodynamic therapy for subfoveal choroidal
neovascularisation secondary to age related macular degeneration: a cross
sectional study. Br J Ophthalmol. 2005; 89(3):316-320.
Dear Editor,
We thank Mennel et al. and Duker et al. for their interesting comments regarding our article.
Mennel et al. make some interesting points on the immediate structural changes that occur after photodynamic therapy (PDT), a topic that we felt was outside the scope of our study. We agree that the short-term and long-term changes after treatment are important and need to be taken into account in future studies on patients undergoing PDT.
We are grateful to Dr’s Duker and Witkin for pointing out the article by Uchino and colleagues [1]. Our patients were older (mean 76 yrs [range 59- 94]) than those reported by these authors (mean 52.3 yrs). Uchino et al. had 20 patients in the same age group and only 2 patients were above 70 years of age. Both these had a complete posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). All our patients had associated pathology and majority had undergone PDT, all of which may have influenced the outcome. While the finding of vitreo-macular attachment may be more common in normal eyes (>50%), our study [2] suggests that the incidence may be may be lower in patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (35.7%).
References
[1] Uchino E., A. Uemura, N. Ohba. Initial stages of posterior vitreous detachment in healthy eyes of older persons evaluated by optical coherence tomography. Arch Ophthalmol. 2001; 119:1475-1479.
[2] Sahni J, Stanga P, Wong D, Harding S. Optical coherence tomography in photodynamic therapy for subfoveal choroidal neovascularisation secondary to age related macular degeneration: a cross sectional study. Br J Ophthalmol. 2005; 89(3):316-320.