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Poor outcomes despite aspirin or statin use in high-risk patients with retinal vein occlusion

  • Retinal Disorders
  • Published:
Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Since atherosclerosis contributes to the pathophysiology of retinal vein occlusion (RVO), we aimed to assess the effects of aspirin and statins on the visual outcomes of RVO in high-risk patients, whom we define to have hypertension and open-angle glaucoma prior to RVO.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective case–control study of adults diagnosed with RVO between 2006 and 2014. To evaluate for a preventive effect of these medications, we compared the prevalence of aspirin or statin use (either separately or concomitantly) among high-risk patients who developed RVO and among those who did not during at least 2 years of follow-up. To evaluate for a therapeutic effect, we then compared the final follow-up visual acuity (VA) of high-risk RVO patients who had and who had not been taking a statin prior to the RVO.

Results

We analyzed 43 eyes [23 central RVOs (CRVOs), 16 branch RVOs (BRVOs), and 4 hemi-RVOs (HRVOs)] from 42 high-risk patients, along with 129 high-risk controls. There was no significant difference (p = 0.47) in aspirin exposure between the control (60%) and RVO (67%) groups, and the increased statin exposure among controls (72% vs. 53% for the cases; p = 0.03) paralleled their higher prevalence of hyperlipidemia. The non-statin and statin RVO groups each had a mean VA of 20/800 at a mean 30 and 43 months of follow-up, respectively.

Conclusions

No preventive benefit of aspirin or statins, and no therapeutic benefit of statins, was found for RVO in high-risk patients. High-risk RVO patients suffer substantially worse outcomes than those reported in other studies not limited to such patients.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, TX, 75390-9057, USA

    Vlad M. Matei, Jonathan Y. Xia & Chan Nguyen

Authors
  1. Vlad M. Matei
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  2. Jonathan Y. Xia
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  3. Chan Nguyen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vlad M. Matei.

Ethics declarations

Funding

Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) provided financial support in the form of a grant. The sponsor had no role in the design or conduct of this research.

Conflict of Interest

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

For this type of study, formal consent is not required.

This submission has not been published anywhere previously and is not being simultaneously considered for any other publication. This study was presented as a poster at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2016 annual meeting.

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Matei, V.M., Xia, J.Y. & Nguyen, C. Poor outcomes despite aspirin or statin use in high-risk patients with retinal vein occlusion. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol 255, 761–766 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-016-3569-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-016-3569-6

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