Russia's nationwide epidemiological noninvasive study of patients with wet age related macular degeneration.
The results of the first large-scale nationwide epidemiological clinical trial on wet AMD are presented. The pathology is shown to be of high medical and social impact. As established, wet AMD basically occurs among the patients over 60, although every fifth patient is younger, and there are more women than men. A disagreement was found between the share of patients with officially registered AMD-related disability (7.2%) and the real prevalence of blind and visually impaired people with AMD: only 27.5% of patients whose visual acuity is less than 0.1 in both eyes are officially invalid. Wet AMD in both eyes was shown to occur in about 30% of cases. Visual acuity of no more than 0.1 in the better eye was found in 17% of the patients have on best eye whilst 54% of the patients have visual acuity of less than 0.1 in the damaged eye. 30% of the surveyed patients are unable to read. The efficiency evaluation of different therapy methods showed a high efficacy of intravitreal Lucentis injections and photodynamic therapy with Visudyne. Lucentis proved to be effective even in advanced stages of the disease: 65% of the patients with visual acuity less than 0.1 show an improvement of visual acuity and 32% remain at the same level. //Russian Ophthalmological Journal, 2011; 2:4-9.