Juxtapapillary choroidal neovascularization in older patients.

We studied retrospectively 55 eyes with juxtapapillary choroidal neovascularization in 42 patients over the age of 50 years. In all but four lesions, the choroidal neovascularization was undetected, causing the choroidal new vessel complexes to be ill defined, discontinuous, and show irregular dye leakage on fluorescein angiography. Growth of the lesion was unpredictable. Visual loss occurred in eight of 16 eyes during the first six months of follow-up. Recurrent neovascularization after photocoagulation originated in some patients from outside the pretreatment subretinal complex. Of the 15 patients with bilateral involvement, 13 had juxtapapillary lesions. Fellow eyes in patients with unilateral juxtapapillary lesions showed no predisposing abnormality at or near the nerve head. The prevalence, density, and fluorescein angiographic characteristics of drusen were different from those in age- and sex-matched patients with macular neovascularization.