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Can Macular Degeneration Surgery Help Me?

Can Macular Degeneration Surgery Help Me?

Wet AMD

Wet AMD

These pictures can help you to understand what you or a loved one might experience if your vision is damaged by age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Vision damage from AMD can be less severe or more severe than what is shown here. So far, no surgical procedure has proven to be the best way to treat AMD. Read more about surgery for AMD in the accompanying article.

In the past several years, major progress has been made toward the discovery of treatments for age related macular degeneration (AMD). Much of this progress is related to the "wet" (neovascular) type of AMD, which is more aggressive than the "dry" (atrophic) type. Eye doctors now have several options, including laser procedures, for treating wet AMD. New eye injection therapies are helping more people than ever to avoid the rapid vision deterioration that wet AMD can cause.

Despite the progress that has been made, no treatment is perfect. Therefore, research continues. Macular degeneration surgery is among the strategies that are being explored.

How Successful are Surgical Treatment Strategies for Wet AMD?

Based on the results of what has been tried so far, it is highly unlikely that your eye doctor will recommend macular degeneration surgery for you. At one time, the surgical removal of the abnormal blood vessels, scar tissue and blood that invade the macula in wet AMD seemed promising. However, a series of large studies, known as the Submacular Surgery Trials, failed to show any significant benefits for these techniques. The expert surgeons who participated in the studies concluded that the chances of complications, especially in severe cases, were high. Furthermore, the AMD patients in the studies reported that their quality of life was still impaired by poor vision after surgery.

Another kind of macular degeneration surgery that has been performed is called "macular translocation." The goal of this kind of surgery is to move the macula away from the abnormal and damaging underlying blood vessels to an area of healthier retinal tissue. This can preserve the macula's ability to function. It can also allow treatment or removal of the underlying blood vessels without the danger of further damaging the macula in the process. In most cases a second surgery, on eye muscles, must also be performed. The second surgery corrects tilted vision caused by the first surgery. The moving of the macula tends to confuse the brain, making whatever is being looked at appear tilted. Double vision and other complications can also occur.

Translocation as macular degeneration surgery has helped some AMD patients to resume their daily activities when they had little hope of seeing again. However, it is extremely complex and still considered experimental. At this time, it is reserved for AMD patients with certain characteristics and for whom other treatments have not worked. For example, the best candidates are patients who have lost central vision in one eye and have experienced recent vision deterioration in the other. Furthermore, only a handful of eye surgery centers across the country currently perform macular translocation surgery.

Does Macular Degeneration Surgery Have a Future?

Because macular translocation surgery does show promise for helping some patients with severe AMD, efforts to further refine it are continuing. New breakthroughs are not out of the question. Other surgical strategies may also emerge as the experts learn more about wet AMD. At the same time, it is possible that surgical strategies may prove to be less necessary if less invasive medical treatments continue to be discovered and prove to be successful.

Hope for the future? New clinical trials.

NeoVista, Inc. is a company that is developing an intraocular epiretinal radiation device intended for the treatment of the wet form of age-related macular degeneration. If you, or someone you know, are interested in participating in the CABERNET Trial, please follow the link below:

Learn more about the CABERNET Trial

 

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