The proposed treat-and-plan (TAP) regiment, which involved two types of visits:
- Assessment visits should be allocated time as per standard practice as those include: check-in (5 min), visual acuity (5 min), dilation (10 min), optical coherence tomography (OCT) (5 min), ophthalmic examination, and injection (10 min)
- For OCT evaluations, authors recommend obtaining only the necessary scans (e.g., macular cube) to avoid prolonged interaction with the ophthalmic photographers.
- Include baseline visit and subsequent assessment visits.
- Patients should be assessed at least every 6 months, given the risk of undiagnosed recurrence between two assessment visits.
- In-and-out injection visits refer to express clinic visits during which the patient only receives the scheduled intravitreal injection, without any examination or testing.
- Prior to the injection, the patient must be asked about symptoms of uveitis in an attempt to rule out intraocular inflammation.
- In the absence of wait times, such visits should not last longer than 10 min (check-in + injection).
- Always take into consideration individual patient risks and current societal circumstances.
This data were provided by an editor note published in Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology on the April, 21.
Source:
Antaki, Fares, and Ali Dirani. “Treating neovascular age-related macular degeneration in the era of COVID-19.” Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology: 1. doi: 10.1007/s00417-020-04693-w Retrieve from : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171913/