Clearer Pathways to Care Coordination and Treatment Management in Retinal Disease

All right, well, let's get started by setting the stage for each of the disease areas that we're going to be focusing on today, which include neovascular age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema, as well as retinal vein occlusion.

So, Dr. Finn, can you please provide a bit of background on each of these disease areas?

Sure.

So, neovascular AMD is one of the conditions we treat most often, and this affects a large population of elderly patients, so nearly 20 million patients in the United States who have macular degeneration, though only about 10% to 15% of these patients have the neovascular form, which accounts for the majority of vision loss seen with this disease.

And patients over the age of 80 are at higher risk for developing AMD compared to those who may be in their 50s or younger.

And there are other risk factors for AMD, which include smoking history, being of European or Caucasian ancestry, and light iris color.

The second disease entity we treat often with anti-VEGF agents is diabetic retinopathy or diabetic macular edema.

And diabetic retinopathy affects one in three patients with diabetes.

So really a very common complication of diabetes and the leading cause of blindness in patients of working age.

So really important for our younger working age adult patients.

And risk factors for diabetic retinopathy as well as macular edema include high blood sugars or uncontrolled diabetes, also concurrent high blood pressure.

And then of course the duration of diabetes.

We know that diabetic retinopathy becomes more prevalent with time with patients having more than five to 10 years of diabetes history being at higher risk for diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema.

And then third most common treated retinal vascular disease is retinal vascular occlusions.

And we have both branch and central retinal vein occlusions, the branch retinal vein occlusions being more common.

And these can be complicated by macular edema, which causes vision loss.

And risk factors, again, for retinal vascular occlusions, occlusions are similar, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and the presence of glaucoma.

as well as age is a risk factor too.

And then lastly, in my practice, I mostly treat adults, but retinopathy of prematurity is also another disease entity where anti-VEGF agents can be used and is a growing indication for anti-VEGF use.

And we're seeing more retinopathy of prematurity, especially as our NICUs and our neonatologists become better at saving more premature infants.

And so these infants that are at very low birth weight or also have other issues at birth, such as respiratory issues and need supplemental oxygen or have some growth failure are at high risk for retinopathy prematurity.

So all of these retinal vascular diseases are linked together by their use of intravitreal VEGF or vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors that are treatment options for these disease entities.

Yeah, thanks so much for that overview.

And I think that last point really highlights why we're talking about all of these conditions together, right? It's this idea that this one drug class can treat so many different things.

And so, Dr.