Macular Degeneration - Causes, Symptoms and Treatment
Peter Rodrick
November 17, 2008
Age-related macular degeneration is a chronic eye disease marked by deterioration of tissue in the part of your eye that's responsible for central vision. The deterioration occurs in the macula (MAK-u-luh), which is in the center of the retina — the layer of tissue on the inside back wall of your eyeball.
Macular degeneration doesn't cause total blindness, but it worsens your quality of life by blurring or causing a blind spot in your central vision. Clear central vision is necessary for reading, driving, recognizing faces and doing detail work.
What Causes Macular Degeneration?
There are two main causes of macular degeneration, each causing a different type of the disease: "wet" or "dry" AMD. Dry AMD is caused by a thinning or degeneration of the macular tissues. This creates deposits of pigment that look like yellowish spots on the retina. While there is no cure dry AMD, the central vision loss it causes is gradual and not as severe as the vision loss that occurs with wet AMD.
Roughly 10% of dry macular degeneration cases progress to become wet macular degeneration. Wet macular degeneration is a neovascular disease that occurs when new blood vessels begin to grow beneath the retina and then leak fluid and blood. While the body is attempting to supply more oxygen and nutrients to the retina with the growth of these blood vessels, the leakage can unfortunately cause scarring and permanent damage to light-sensitive retinal cells and create blind spots in your central vision.
Macular Degeneration Symptoms
The general symptoms common to both dry and wet of Macular Degeneration include loss of central vision, difficulty reading or performing tasks that involve detail and close work, and blurred or distorted vision such as wavy or bent appearances of straight lines.
Some of the symptoms associated with dry Macular Degeneration may include the increasing need for brighter lighting when reading or performing tasks that involve detail, difficulty adjusting to low levels of lighting, printed or written words starting to appear increasingly blurry, colors appear less bright, difficulty recognizing faces and people, gradual increase in the haziness of overall vision, blurred or blind spot in the center of the visual field, with a considerable drop in the central vision acuity and a need to scan eyes all around an object to get a complete image.
Macular Degeneration Treatment
In a landmark prospective, randomized, controlled, masked national study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NHS) and the National Eye Institute (NIH), people with moderate and advanced age-related macular degeneration were shown to have a significant benefit with regard to disease progression and preservation of visual acuity by taking dietary supplements containing high-dose antioxidants and zinc. This study, called the AREDS (age-related eye disease study), was the first ever to prove that dietary supplements can alter the natural progression and complications of a disease state.
Mayo Clinic offers a new drug treatment that directly targets the growing blood vessels in patients with wet macular degeneration. After the ophthalmologist numbs the eye with an anesthetic, the drug, called pegaptanib sodium (MacugenŽ) is injected into the affected eye. The medicine stops or slows the blood vessels from growing, leaking and bleeding. The treatment is given every six weeks to prevent the blood vessels from causing more vision loss. This therapy causes less damage to the retina than the laser treatments described below.
Visit Home
Remedies. Also visit Breast
Serum and Breast
Firming Product
Macular degeneration doesn't cause total blindness, but it worsens your quality of life by blurring or causing a blind spot in your central vision. Clear central vision is necessary for reading, driving, recognizing faces and doing detail work.
What Causes Macular Degeneration?
There are two main causes of macular degeneration, each causing a different type of the disease: "wet" or "dry" AMD. Dry AMD is caused by a thinning or degeneration of the macular tissues. This creates deposits of pigment that look like yellowish spots on the retina. While there is no cure dry AMD, the central vision loss it causes is gradual and not as severe as the vision loss that occurs with wet AMD.
Roughly 10% of dry macular degeneration cases progress to become wet macular degeneration. Wet macular degeneration is a neovascular disease that occurs when new blood vessels begin to grow beneath the retina and then leak fluid and blood. While the body is attempting to supply more oxygen and nutrients to the retina with the growth of these blood vessels, the leakage can unfortunately cause scarring and permanent damage to light-sensitive retinal cells and create blind spots in your central vision.
Macular Degeneration Symptoms
The general symptoms common to both dry and wet of Macular Degeneration include loss of central vision, difficulty reading or performing tasks that involve detail and close work, and blurred or distorted vision such as wavy or bent appearances of straight lines.
Some of the symptoms associated with dry Macular Degeneration may include the increasing need for brighter lighting when reading or performing tasks that involve detail, difficulty adjusting to low levels of lighting, printed or written words starting to appear increasingly blurry, colors appear less bright, difficulty recognizing faces and people, gradual increase in the haziness of overall vision, blurred or blind spot in the center of the visual field, with a considerable drop in the central vision acuity and a need to scan eyes all around an object to get a complete image.
Macular Degeneration Treatment
In a landmark prospective, randomized, controlled, masked national study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NHS) and the National Eye Institute (NIH), people with moderate and advanced age-related macular degeneration were shown to have a significant benefit with regard to disease progression and preservation of visual acuity by taking dietary supplements containing high-dose antioxidants and zinc. This study, called the AREDS (age-related eye disease study), was the first ever to prove that dietary supplements can alter the natural progression and complications of a disease state.
Mayo Clinic offers a new drug treatment that directly targets the growing blood vessels in patients with wet macular degeneration. After the ophthalmologist numbs the eye with an anesthetic, the drug, called pegaptanib sodium (MacugenŽ) is injected into the affected eye. The medicine stops or slows the blood vessels from growing, leaking and bleeding. The treatment is given every six weeks to prevent the blood vessels from causing more vision loss. This therapy causes less damage to the retina than the laser treatments described below.
Visit Home
Remedies. Also visit Breast
Serum and Breast
Firming Product
Print
Email
