When something goes wrong here, the results are devastating. Macular degeneration, an age-related atrophy or scarring of the central retina, is the leading cause of blindness in people over 55 and affects more than 3 million Americans every year. Just 15 years ago, when elderly patients with macular degeneration came to the Emory Eye Center for treatment, little could be done for them. Even halting the progression of this disease seemed hardly possible. Today that outlook is changing.
Macular degeneration remains an imposing public health problem.
But this disease is the focus of much more attention than in the past, and a good deal of this effort is being led by people at Emory. We've been the leading force on many of the panels organizing these studies. No other center in the Southeast has all of our capabilities together in one place. We were in on the ground floor. The macula, where images and light are focused, is 100 times more sensitive to detail than the peripheral retina.