This can make daily activities like recognizing faces, reading, driving a car, watching television and identifying currency almost impossible. If left untreated, this condition can result in legal blindness in only two to three years. Unfortunately, treatment options have been limited until recently. With medical advances being made every day, we asked our vision expert, Dr. Jason Slakter, what resources we have to treat AMD and preserve sight. The cause of AMD is still unknown and no preventive measure has been proven effective.
Smoking is the only clinically proven risk factor.
However, the key is early detection. If AMD is caught at an early stage it can sometimes be treated more effectively. Now there's hope. The therapy, called Visudyne, is administered at your doctor's office on an outpatient basis. In this procedure, a light-activated drug known as Visudyne is injected into the patient's bloodstream.