She Didn't See It Coming
Clip: Season 1 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Why are we seeing more cases of age-related macular degeneration in older adults?
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible blindness and vision loss in older adults. Learn about AMD from Dr. Avni Finn at Vanderbilt Eye Institute. Early treatment could save your vision.
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Aging Matters is a local public television program presented by WNPT
She Didn't See It Coming
Clip: Season 1 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible blindness and vision loss in older adults. Learn about AMD from Dr. Avni Finn at Vanderbilt Eye Institute. Early treatment could save your vision.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(gentle music) - I think we all are so dependent on our eyes that we just can't imagine being without good eyesight.
But on Christmas day of 2019, I was at my son's house taking a nap.
And when I awoke, I had a black spot in my left eye and didn't know what it was.
The next day, I went to my ophthalmologist and she immediately said it was macular degeneration and we had to treat it right away.
- Hello, Mrs.
Mcray.
How are you doing today?
- [Mrs.
Mcray] Doing well.
- Good.
I've already reviewed your pictures today and everything looks really stable.
Macular degeneration is also called age-related macular degeneration.
So it does occur in patients who are over the age of 50 or older and can occur in two different forms.
So in dry macular degeneration, we just have the degeneration of cells over time.
In wet macular degeneration, which is a bulk of what I treat, we have the growth of new abnormal blood vessels under the retina.
Those new abnormal blood vessels leak and bleed into the retina and can cause vision loss in really what is the central vision for a patient.
What we use to see faces to read, to drive.
And everything looks good here.
There's no hemorrhage or fluid.
We know that patients who are of Caucasian descent may be at higher risk for macular degeneration.
There are certain genes that we're studying that can be passed down in families that can also make patients more at risk for macular degeneration.
Smoking can also affect your macular degeneration risk, as well as UV light exposure.
And while some of these things are modifiable, many risk factors for macular degeneration are not.
- Thank you for everything.
- Of course.
- You've just been wonderful.
- I would encourage patients who are in their fifties or sixties to see an eye specialist, particularly an ophthalmologist, especially if they have a family history of eye disease like glaucoma or macular degeneration.
Something that can potentially show up silently at first, and so can only really be picked up on an exam with a specialist of the eye.
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Aging Matters is a local public television program presented by WNPT