Surgical treatment for AMD offers patients improved quality of life

Macular translocation with 360° peripheral retinectomy improved the quality of life of people with age-related macular degeneration who underwent the procedure, according to a study.

Mark T. Cahill and colleagues at Duke University studied 50 patients with AMD who underwent the macular translocation surgery to identify changes in their quality of life from before surgery to after. The average age of the patients was 76.9 years old.

Little data exists regarding quality of life of patients with advanced vision loss from AMD, according to a press release from Duke regarding the study.

In this study, quality of life among those with advanced vision loss from AMD was compared with data from other studies of people with milder effects of AMD or other ocular diseases. According to Duke, that gave the researchers a baseline from which to compare the quality of life after surgery. They also performed a separate study in which they compared the patients’ quality of life before and after the macular translocation surgery.

In the second study, postoperative mean questionnaire scores were higher than preoperative mean scores, and the difference was significant for “important vision-specific subscales,” the researchers said.

Macular translocation with 360° retinectomy is a two-stage procedure that entails first rotating the retina to shift the degenerating macula to a healthy area, then rotating the eye to account for the ensuing tilt in a person’s visual field, the Duke release said.

Patients with improved visual function had greater mean changes in quality of life scores than those with no improvement.

The study is published in the January issue of Ophthalmology.