Incidence of patients presenting with exudative maculopathy and neovascular retinal disease in an urban population.

PURPOSE: To determine the incidence of exudative macular and neovascular retinal disease presenting within a defined urban population.

STUDY DESIGN: prospective, observational, consecutive case series.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients referred to ten ophthalmic centers within a defined 10-week period with a newly diagnosed exudative macular and/or neovascular retinal disease were examined fundoscopically, angiographically and quantified according to age and underlying disease.

RESULTS: A total of 527 eyes of 426 patients were referred. The most frequent disease was neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD, 199/527, 37.8%, 184 patients), followed by diabetic maculopathy and/or proliferative diabetic retinopathy (199/527, 37.8%, 128 patients) and venous occlusive disease (67/527, 12.7%, 67 patients). The majority of neovascular AMD consisted of occult without classic choroidal neovascularization (CNV, 115/ 199, 57.8%); predominantly classic CNV was seen more often than minimally classic CNV (43/199, 21.6% vs. 27/ 199, 13.6%). The overwhelming majority of the diabetic cases had diabetic macular edema (179/199, 89.9%); only 10.1% had vasoproliferative disease. All other causes of CNV, macular edema/exudation, and retinal neovascularization were observed in < 5% of all patients.

CONCLUSION: The main causes of exudative maculopathy are CNV due to neovascular AMD and diabetic macular edema. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is the main cause of retinal neovascularization. The number of patients with neovascular AMD presents a future challenge for ophthalmologists.