That's why ophthalmologists recommend people wear UV-blocking sunglasses or eyeglasses when outside, he added. Dry AMD usually brings slowly diminishing vision over the course of several years. Wet macular degeneration, by contrast, can produce noticeable changes in vision quality in days or weeks. Early symptoms like blurring and distortion may worsen until blind spots appear. A person with AMD may find it impossible to recognize a familiar face or drive a car, but the disease does not cause total blindness.
Peripheral vision remains.
The disease ruins a vital portion of the eye known as the macula. To read this page, watch TV, hit a tennis ball, or do anything else that requires keen forward vision, you depend on the macula, a dimple on the back wall of the eye directly opposite the pupil. Packed with light-sensitive cells, the macula provides the resolving power necessary to distinguish fine details and see crisp images. In patients with wet AMD, weak-walled blood vessels begin to proliferate in the layers of the eye beneath the macula. Blood and fluid weep from these leaky vessels and warp the macula.