I wanted to start this page by saying I am enjoying the halcyon days of summer but then realized I do not know what ‘halcyon’ means!
Hold on…OK, synonyms are “calm, peaceful and tranquil”. We’re good…except for Etta jumping on my head in the pool. I am thinking I won’t actually be able to swim when they are in the pool area. Etta swamped me!
Oh, well. If that is the worst that happens today, I am ahead of the game.
Moving right along. Halcyon days of summer, etc, etc. I have been outside walking and hanging out at the pool with the puppygirls most of the afternoon. Blessedly sunny today but I am reasonably sure I have gotten burnt.
Remember to wear your shades. Yes, your eyes can actually get sunburnt. More importantly, UV rays contribute to oxidative stress and that leads to all sorts of things ending in more vision loss.
Since I have some days with nothing to do, I have gotten a load to the animal rescue yard sale and bagged up all the recyclables to transport to the recycling center. Among other things, of course. I have high hopes of using this time wisely to do a lot around the house.
Please note I am sitting by the pool and writing this page. Sigh. The best-laid plans of mice and men. Did I mention I really dislike anything to do with housekeeping?
Found an interesting website. It’s news-medical.net. A while back Lin did a page on eye drops for wet AMD. News-Mediçal reported PanOptica announced at the end of May they had dosed their first patient in a 1 / 2 clinical trial with PAN 90806. PAN 90806 is a once-daily eye drop containing a very small molecule anti-VEGF. PanOptic is hoping to avoid the cornea problems that occurred in earlier trials.
They also, of course, are looking to reduce the “injection burden.” The article says they hope a reduced burden will lead to folks staying in treatment longer.
Whoa there! Discontinue rate for anti-VEGF shots? Let’s look.
A 2017 journal article by Polat, Inan, Ozcan, et al (and yes, this was Turkey) reported a dropout rate of nearly 18% and a non-compliance rate of nearly 40%! Oh, good grief!
Not sure what the dropout rates are for the US, UK or EU. The only article I found based in the US was with the very old. Does anyone know what it is for us under 90?
The article from Turkey talked about the “usual suspects” as being related to compliance rates. You know: age, education, distance to the hospital, finances, etc.
Any way you look at it, it is scary. I never gave a thought to treatment compliance. If I had, I would have assumed dropout rates were low. Maybe not.
Any thoughts on this? What makes you folks getting shots want to quit? What do you think could be done to help people stay in treatment? Let’s start a discussion.
Written June 9th, 2018