Macular Degeneration Support Group

Dear Retinal Specialists.

I have an urgent AMD (Age related macular degeneration) consultation request for my 66 year old mother living in India.

Background
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She has wet form of AMD in her right eye and dry AMD in her left eye. Below is a summary of her treatment so far.

## October 2006 - She got her cataract surgery done. At that time Dr. told her that she has some retina problem.
## March 2007- A retina specialist examined her condition for the first time.
## April 2007 - Her wet AMD treatment started and 1st injection administered

She is currently being treated by one of the retina specialists in Delhi, India. For treating her wet AMD we initially started with Lucentis but later switched over to Avastin. The regime her doctor advised was to administer a 3 injections course (1 injection every month), whenever she gets fluid / bleeding in her wet AMD affected eye. She has taken multiple such courses of Lucentis/Avastin injections so far. Initially her eye responded well to injections but she had an incident a couple of years back where fluid started getting deposited in her and she did not realize. By the time she visited the doctor again a lot of damage had already happened. She has been diligent in checking Amsler Grid since that last incident.

For her dry AMD she was advised to take Vitalux Plus (vitamin and antioxidant supplement available in India for dry AMD) capsules orally. Later I found about AREDS2 formula and a few months back she switched over to Bausch + Lomb PreserVision Eye Vitamin AREDS 2.
(http://www.bausch.com/en/Our-Produc...

In November 2011 she learned that wet AMD has already damaged ¾ vision of her affected eye. During her last month’s doctor visit she found that vision in her wet eye is as bad as completely gone and a therefore not giving further injections was thought to be one of the good options at that point.

Ask for retina specialists advice and discussion
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Below are some of my thoughts based on whatever little I have learnt about her condition. I wanted to seek your advice on these, understand the pros and cons of continuing her injections and discuss the best course of action for her wet AMD affected eye going forward.

## We know that bleeding, leaking, and scarring from these blood vessels eventually causes irreversible damage to the photoreceptors.
## Although her macula already has a big scar, if we stop intervening using these injections, will this scar not eventual grow bigger in size, perhaps damaging whatever negligible central and periphery vision she is currently left with?
## Also lets say few years down the line there is some new treatment available (http://www.amd.org/research/wet-amd... , leaving her eye just as it is now will reduce our chances of getting benefited from these future treatment options.
## We also need to consider the fact that dry AMD in her other eye is also already at risk of turning into wet AMD.

She is going to visit the doctor’s office again tomorrow for regular checkup. I am in US and therefore I have not been able to go along with her during her doctor visits. Once I get some good solid advice, I will discuss those with her doctor in India and hopefully we can make the right decision.

Thanks and lot and really appreciated your help!

Best Regards
- T
Posted on 07/18/12, 09:09 pm