Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Personalized medicine and patient-tailored drug dosing have been substantiated through thousands of clinical studies, demonstrating their safety and efficacy. The principle: "as much as necessary, as little as possible" is widely spread. Quantities and doses are therefore adjusted individually. This is not the case for intravitreal injections in the context of retinal diseases. Intravitreal injections are not adjusted in relation to the vitreous volume. The vitreous body is described as "approx. 4 cm(3)" in the literature. METHODS: In this retrospective observational study, we included 72 eyes of patients who had undergone magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the orbit and biometry measurements of the anterior chamber depth (ACD) and axial length. After segmentation of the volume data, the vitreous volume was extracted by voxel integration, and a simple prediction model was derived to determine the vitreous volume from the axial length (AL) measurement with AL(3)·π/6·(0.76 + 0.012·(AL-24). This is the volume of a sphere AL(3)·π/6 and a correction term 0.76 + 0.012·(AL-24) to account for the portion of the vitreous in the entire globe and the proportional increase of the vitreous portion for long (myopic) eyes. RESULTS: Emmetropic eyes with an axial length of 22.50-23.50 mm had a vitreous volume of around 4.5-5.5 cm(3). Myopic eyes with an axial length of 30.00 mm had a calculated vitreous volume of 9.0-10.0 cm(3). Hypermetropic eyes with an axial length of 20.00 mm showed a vitreous volume of 3.0-4.0 cm(3). CONCLUSIONS: By implementing the new calculation formula on the IOLCON website, it will be easy to get the exact individual vitreous volume. The data could be used by retinal surgeons prior to surgery. The knowledge of anatomical dimensions and exact individual vitreous volume seems to be important for gas and silicone oil fillings. With the newly derived knowledge, multicentric studies can evaluate the impact of the dose in intravitreal therapies. Patient-tailored dosing could prevent side effects and improve effectiveness.