What is Wet Macular Degeneration?
Wet macular degeneration is a disease that takes place in a person when abnormal blood vessels begin to grow beneath our macula, and then begin to leak. As a result of this leaking, a breakdown takes place in Bruch’s membrane. This generally happens close to drusen deposits, which is where the growth of new blood vessel growth takes place. This is also called neovascularization. These blood vessels are quite delicate and tend to leak fluid and blood (which is why this type is known as ‘wet’), causing scarring of our macula, which leads to fast and severe damage to our retina. Our central vision begins to become distorted or is completely lost within a short span of time, sometimes within just a few days. Though wet macular degeneration happens to just 10% of total cases, it is the chief cause of complete blindness with 90% of the cases ending in blindness.
Unlike dry macular, wet macular degeneration is a chronic, progressive condition of the eye which attacks people generally 60 years or older in age. Estimates state that the disease has affected around 2 million people in Europe and around 1.25 million in the US. Wet macularmacular degeneration is the primary cause of blindness for people over the age of 65 years all across the developed world. A handful of treatments are possible, but all of them are not suited for all cases of wet macular degeneration. Where you can get appropriate treatment through these procedures, it is important to note that they will not cure this condition, but only stall its progress for a while. Macular degeneration is generally bilateral, and it can have a devastating affect on patients.
Some treatments that are available and help to slow the rate of loss of vision:
Photodynamic Therapy
The first drug therapy which was approved by the FDA for treating age-related macular degeneration is Visudyne. Visudyne therapy can help restrict and sometimes even halt loss of vision loss that takes place in classic wet age-related macular degeneration. Visudyne therapy is broken up into two steps. The first step involves injecting Visudyne into your blood stream, and letting it travel to your eye. The second step involves the activation of Visudyne via the medium of a non-thermal laser. This cool laser does not scar or damage our eye, and is has been made to allow comfort to the patient.
Sadly, you will almost always need to take a complete therapy course which involves going in for multiple treatments in the initial 2 or 3 years that follow to stop the progression of the disease.
A known side-effect of Visudyne is infusion-related back pain that occurs in a few patients. It is also noteworthy that around 50% of the patients who have the wet form in one eye are highly likely to have the same disease in their second eye within 5 years.
