OBJECTIVES: The objective of this research was to characterize real-world treatment patterns among wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) patients in diverse healthcare delivery settings in the United States (US).

METHODS: Patients from a specialty ophthalmology network and 5 integrated delivery networks within the OMNY Health Database with any indication of wet AMD (diagnosis code: H35.32*) from 2017-2022 were included. Demographic characteristics were tabulated at first wet AMD diagnosis. Percentages of patients with prescriptions or procedures for the following treatments were computed: aflibercept, bevacizumab, brolucizumab, ranibizumab, photodynamic therapy, and laser therapy. Secular trends in annual treatment patterns were described.

RESULTS: Across all years, a total of 20,052 wet AMD patients with prescription and procedure data were included. Distributions of gender (58% female), race (97% White, 3% Other among known categories), and age (97% ≥ 61 years, 2% 21-60 years, <1% ≤ 20 years) were as expected. Patient percentages ranged from 24% to 1% for aflibercept, peaking in 2019. Brolucizumab use decreased from 7% to 3% from 2020 to 2022, and ranibizumab use decreased from 6% to 1% from 2017 to 2022. From 2017 to 2022, bevacizumab use ranged from 0.2% to 30%, peaking in 2022. Photodynamic therapy ranged from 0.1% to 0.4%, while laser surgeries peaked at 10% in 2018 and decreased to 0.1% in 2022.

CONCLUSIONS: Results provide insights into real-world treatment patterns for wet AMD within a diverse set of US healthcare settings. Bevacizumab has seen a big increase in usage in the last couple of years and was the most utilized treatment observed. As new treatments are developed and introduced, future analyses would be helpful to understand uptake of therapies and prescription patterns among wet AMD patients.