To eliminate repeated injections, researchers are developing innovative ways to deliver medication to the eye. The shots have one big drawback: They have to be administered as often as monthly. "Now, in a majority of patients, we can stabilize vision and, in some patients, even restore some vision." "Before anti-VEGF agents, we had nothing to stop wet macular degeneration," says Jeffrey Heier, M.D., chair of research and therapeutics for the American Society of Retina Specialists and director of the Vitreoretinal Service at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston. Injected into the eye, the medications block VEGF proteins, which normally help blood vessels form. Fortunately, a new class of drugs called anti-VEGF agents, now widely available, can halt and sometimes even reverse the damage. Although far less common than the dry form, in which deposits destroy the macula, wet AMD is much more destructive, leading to more rapid and profound vision loss. Wet macular degeneration occurs when abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina, often leaking fluid or blood into the macula and damaging central vision. Injected anti-VEGF agents can help reverse eye damage and stabilize vision. "For many patients, we see significant improvements." "Fortunately, the brain is usually able to adjust to the two different images," explains ophthalmologist David Boyer, who directs the Retina-Vitreous Associates Medical Group in Southern California. And because some people have trouble adjusting to the different images each eye receives, ophthalmologists run prospective candidates through a series of tests to determine if they're a good fit. The implant cannot be placed in an eye that has had cataract surgery. The telescope is implanted only in one eye, so that the other eye continues to have full peripheral vision. The VisionCare telescope implant recently won FDA approval for patients 65 and older with end-stage AMD. Last summer I was able to see well enough to plant a garden again - eggplants, tomatoes, peppers." Like a stargazing telescope, the tiny device magnifies a small area and projects the image across the whole retina, allowing healthy cells to make it out. Last year surgeons inserted a telescope implant manufactured by VisionCare into one of his eyes. ![]() I couldn't read at all," says Vellone, who lives in Somers, N.Y., with his wife. "My vision was so bad I'd walk right by people I know because I didn't see them. Stargazing telescopeįor years, Joe Vellone, 76, watched his sight gradually deteriorate from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a condition in which the light-sensitive cells of the macula - the central part of the retina - are destroyed. Joe Vellone, 76, received a telescope implant to improve his vision. "But it's not a question of if we'll end blindness. "We still have a lot to learn," admits Stephen Rose, chief research officer for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. In fact, progress in ophthalmology is so rapid that some researchers have already begun to envision an end to many forms of vision loss. The device, called the Argus II, is just one of a growing number of bold new approaches to treating blindness, offering hope to the millions of mostly older Americans in danger of losing their sight from macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and other eye diseases. But for Kulik, that simple walk around the campus was "a miracle." Blind for more than two decades from an inherited eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, Kulik was seeing again - clearly enough to make out the sidewalk and the grassy edge - thanks to a sophisticated microchip implanted in one of her eyes. En español | If you had seen Lisa Kulik and her husband strolling the grounds of the University of Southern California's Eye Institute last summer, you would have thought nothing of it.
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