Is there any treatment for age-related macular degeneration?
- For the common dry-ARMD - there is no treatment (apart from taking dietary supplements - see below). However, remember that in this type of ARMD the visual loss tends to be very gradual, over 5-10 years or so.
- For the less common wet-ARMD - in some cases treatment may halt or delay the progression of visual loss. Some newer treatments may even be able to reverse some of the visual loss. Treatments which may be considered include photodynamic therapy, treatment with drugs, and laser photo-coagulation.
Photodynamic therapy
This is a technique that was developed in the late 1990s. A drug called verteporfin is injected into a vein on the arm. Within a few minutes the verteporfin binds to proteins in the newly formed abnormal blood vessels in the macula. A light at a special wavelength is then shone into the eye for just over a minute. Verteporfin is a photosensitive drug. This means that when light is shone at the blood vessels coated with verteporfin, the verteporfin 'activates' and causes damage and destroys the abnormally growing blood vessels (without damaging the nearby rods and cones).
Photodynamic therapy is only suitable for some cases. It depends on exactly where the new blood vessels are growing and their extent. It does not work in all cases although the success rate in treated people is high. success means that the visual loss is prevented from getting worse - it does not resore any lost vision. Treatment usually needs to be repeated every few months to continue to suppress newly growing blood vessels.
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