CTS 2024: First time data from the CALM Registry

Michael Singer, MD, spoke with Modern Retina about his presentation of first time data from the CALM Registry at Clinical Trials at the Summit meeting being held in Park City, Utah on June 8, 2024.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Michael Singer, MD:

Hello, my name is Michael Singer. I'm a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, and Director of Clinical Research at Medical Center Ophthalmology Associates. And today I want to talk about the first time data results of the CALM registry, the 36-month data, looking at fluocinolone acetonide implant for the treatment of uveitic macular edema.

What we did was we looked at a registry of patients that essentially were treated with this medication in real life. Patients initially were treated, and we follow them for 36 months and had a look back as well, and we wanted to see how this implant really performed. And it turns out that when you give patients this implant, what you're able to do is reduce the need for recurrence or, not the need for recurrence, but the actual recurrence rate from about 85% to about 16%, which is really important. Because obviously treatment burden in these patient populations, who are typically working age, it's really a big deal.

In addition, we were able to decrease the swelling in these patients from in terms of excess macular through fluid over 300, from like 56% to 40%. And in addition, able to get 3 line gainers in almost 20% of patients, while still maintaining the number of patients that were 20/40. Obviously, when we talk about steroids, we everybody worries about IOP. And overall, it's relatively stable with only 6point - 6.7% of patients needing any filtering surgery as well and about under 20% of people having an IOP of 10 points or higher.

So my feeling in this process is this is a very good alternative for patients who seem to have recurrent episodes of uveitis that need to be treated in such a way that they're able to live their life, hopefully improve their vision and be relatively stable with a relatively acceptable safety profile.