The Dry Form:
Most patients with macular degeneration are told they have the “Dry” form. That is when your eye-care professional looks into your eye, he or she sees that the central retina has become distorted, pigmented, or most commonly thinned.
With dry macular degeneration, the bad news is that once the retina has disappeared, it cannot be replaced. It is like the film (retina) in your ocular camera (eye) has a developed hole in the middle. We are not yet able to transplant the retina of one patient to another.
The “silver lining” for most patients with dry macular degeneration is that most patients lose their central vision very slowly, and that many patients keep most of their vision. In general, patients with dry macular degeneration don’t go blind, though they can have poor central vision.
The Wet Form:
The “wet” form of macular degeneration is a worse disease. Patients with wet macular degeneration can develop abnormal blood vessels under their retina. These blood vessels are like wires with bad insulation. They leak their contents under and into the retina [serum (fluid), blood cells, and fats]. When eye-care specialists look at a macula affected by wet macular degeneration, they see these fats, fluid, and, or red blood cells.
Like a cut on your arm, the blood and fluid will eventually dry and leave a scar in the macula. Since this scar occurs in the center of vision, it creates a black or gray spot in the vision called a scotoma.
Patients with wet macular degeneration usually have multiple episodes of new blood vessel formation. This can cause several episodes of leakage and bleeding into the macula. Therefore, any treatment that does not fix the underlying cause of this new blood vessel formation and leakage will only provide temporary help for most patients.
