Macular degeneration is the prevailing reason for acute loss in eyesight among individuals past sixty years of age. It takes place when the tiny core part of the retina, called as the macula begins deteriorating. Retina is the light detecting nerve tissue located at the rear of the eye. Since the condition progresses proportionally with aging, it is mostly called as age-related macular degeneration or AMD. Though macular degeneration nearly ever is a sightlessness condition, but it could be a cause of considerable ocular disability.
Age-related macular degeneration is of two key kinds, namely dry and wet AMD. Dry AMD is caused due to breakdown of cells present in the macula leading to eye sight issues. Wet AMD occurs due to irregular blood vessels growing underneath the macula. The reason for such nerve cells damage is still not known.
Macular Degeneration Symptoms:
Macular degeneration symptoms comprise of dry AMD and wet AMD both of which are causal in eyesight loss and could bring about analogous signs and symptoms.
- Core vision turns faint, blurry or diminished sharpness.
- Additional lighting is required to read as compared to earlier.
- A person finds it trickier to see faces of individuals with clarity.
- Distortion noted in appearance of items or seeming smaller than what they actually are.
- A newly developed void or sightless speck in one’s core field of vision.
- Straight lines start appearing undulating or curvy. This is generally the foremost sign of wet AMD.
- A person could experience core vision lost which persists or deteriorating with passage of time. In case a person is having wet AMD, the loss could be acute and quick.
Macular degeneration symptoms (wet and dry AMD) vary in 2 key ways:
Rate of progression
- Dry AMD occurs at a slow pace. Eye sight variations due to dry AMD could be so gradual that they often go unnoticed. The disease could be present for many years prior to it affecting a person’s capacity of reading, driving and doing day-to-day tasks. In case a person is having AMD in merely a single eye then slight variations in eye sight could be noticed as the other normal eye would involuntarily cover up for eyesight issues that have affected the other eye.
- Wet AMD is a sudden occurrence. Signs caused due to wet AMD have a tendency of appearing abruptly and deteriorating swiftly.
Severity
- Signs of dry AMD are generally mild-ranging initially. However afterwards, the signs could increase in severity.
- Wet AMD has a tendency of causing more acute eyesight alterations and loss.
