In daily life, our eyes often encounter uncomfortable situations, such as dry eyes, eye irritation, eye fatigue, and other symptoms, which plague our normal life.
In fact, whether it is a simple and easy to treat ocular surface disease or a complex and difficult to treat ocular fundus disease, some symptoms will appear before the condition worsens, which is an alarm of deteriorating vision.
For example, in the early stages of complex macular degeneration, some symptoms can be clearly detected: distorted vision, blank field of view, and always black shadows in front of the eyes, as shown in the following picture:
It should be noted that if people’s visual acuity changes like this, it should be taken seriously, especially for middle-aged and elderly people, as this condition is a precursor to macular degeneration. This is a blinding eye disease, and if left untreated, it can cause irreversible decline in central vision, leading to blindness in the eyes.
What is macular degeneration?
The macula is located in the center of the retina, where over 90% of cone cells gather, making it the most sensitive part of central vision. If there is a problem with the macula, vision will be affected.
Macular degeneration is an eye disease with a high risk of blindness, usually a natural result of aging degeneration. Patients may experience microvascular leakage and even scar formation.
The fluid leaked from blood vessels can damage the macula, causing symptoms of blurred vision. As the condition worsens, it gradually develops into visual distortion and black shadows in the center of the field of view.
If macular degeneration is not treated promptly and effectively, it may cause irreversible damage to the patient’s central vision, and even lead to blindness.
Inducing factors of macular degeneration
The pathogenesis of macular degeneration is very complex, involving oxidative stress, inflammatory response, excessive sunlight exposure, genetic and environmental factors.
Aging is considered the most important risk factor. In addition, smoking, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia are also important risk factors that cannot be ignored.
Inducing factors of macular degeneration
Age factor: people over 55 years old are prone to macular degeneration, and the incidence rate will increase with age.
Lifestyle habits: Some bad daily habits, such as smoking, can also lead to macular degeneration.
Smoking increases the risk of macular degeneration, which may lead to blindness! And the greater the amount of smoking, the higher the risk. In addition, the incidence rate of people who have smoked for more than 20 years is much higher than that of non-smokers.
Environmental factors: If the eyes are exposed to excessive sunlight for a long time, they may be more susceptible to macular degeneration.
Genetic factors: Patients with a family history of macular degeneration need to be particularly careful as they are likely to inherit this disease.
Disease factors: People with cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, eye tumors, and eye injuries are more likely to cause macular degeneration, and should pay attention to it in daily life.
Treatment methods for macular degeneration
Based on current ophthalmic clinical medical technology, there are four effective ways to treat macular degeneration, which are laser photocoagulation, photodynamic therapy, steroid vitreous injection, and anti vascular endothelial growth factor injection.
- Laser photocoagulation solidification
Laser photocoagulation utilizes the thermal energy of laser to destroy the proliferative blood vessels under the retina and skillfully preserve the retina in the unaffected macular lesion area.
However, due to the lack of selectivity in thermal laser, the location of macular degeneration in patients must be at a certain distance from the center of the macular spot. Otherwise, burning the proliferative blood vessels will inevitably damage the surrounding tissues, leading to real-time visual degradation or blindness. Therefore, it is only suitable for a small number of patients with macular degeneration.
- Photodynamic therapy
When photosensitizers are injected into the patient’s blood and selectively accumulate on abnormal blood vessels beneath the retina.
After activation by a non thermal laser, the photosensitizer can block these abnormally proliferating blood vessels without affecting other normal tissues on the retina. In order to control the deterioration of the condition, improve the clarity of the patient’s vision, reduce black shadows, and correct the distortion of visible objects, but it cannot restore the lost vision.
- Steroid vitreous injection
Triamcinolone acetonide (TA) is a mineralocorticoid that can reduce the damage to the blood retinal barrier in the eye, so the treatment of macular degeneration can be achieved by injecting the steroid into the vitreous.
However, it should be noted that steroid vitreous injection must be performed aseptically under surface anesthesia, which can generally be done in the diagnosis and treatment room or operating room. Doctors must take all necessary precautions to reduce the chance of infection.
- Anti vascular endothelial growth factor injection
The current mainstream method in the world is to control macular degeneration by injecting anti vascular endothelial growth factor.
Research has shown that injection of anti vascular endothelial growth factor can effectively prevent further decline or even improve vision. Usually, two growth factor drugs, “Cancer Stop” and “Le Shu Qing”, are used.
In daily life, everyone should develop good habits to stabilize blood pressure control, avoid smoking as much as possible, avoid long hours of sunlight, reduce the intake of high cholesterol foods, and regularly go to the hospital to check the condition of the eyes in order to better prevent the occurrence of macular degeneration.