Peripheral Exudative Hemorrhagic Chorioretinopathy with and without treatment-Clinical and multimodal imaging characteristics and prognosis

Purpose To describe clinical and imaging characteristics of patients with Peripheral Exudative Hemorrhagic Chorioretinopathy (PEHCR), prognosis and treatment response. Methods In this retrospective cohort study medical records of patients diagnosed with PEHCR in a tertiary medical center between 2008 and 2018 were reviewed. Collected data included demographics, medical history, ophthalmologic examination and multi-modal imaging including fundus autofluorescence, optical coherence tomography (OCT), ultrasound (US), fluorescein angiography and indocyanine green angiography when available. Bevacizumab treatment results were analyzed when applied. Results 35 eyes of 32 patients were included, with a female predominance (56.25%) and an average age of 79.09.87 years at presentation. Most common OCT and US findings were subretinal mass (68.75%), pigment epithelial detachment (30.00%) and atrophic changes (21.86%). Median follow-up period was 18.00 months (range 0-102). Visual acuity (VA) remained stable (39.29%) or improved (25.00%) in most cases available for follow-up. Treatment with intravitreal bevacizumab induced a statistically significant clinical resolution in 88.89% of eyes available for follow-up (8/9 eyes) (p = 0.02). Conclusions PEHCR is presented with high clinical variability and generally good prognosis. This is the first publication demonstrating a statistically significant clinical resolution of disease following intravitreal bevacizumab injections.

Automated summary

This retrospective cohort study described the clinical and imaging characteristics of patients with PEHCR and analyzed their prognosis and treatment response. The results showed that PEHCR has high clinical variability and generally a good prognosis. In addition, treatment with intravitreal bevacizumab injections significantly improved the disease.