VIDEO: Clinicians now can provide 'some level of hope' in geographic atrophy

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The great part is now we can have a conversation and provide some level of hope. And it’s important to realize that this is not a panacea. This is certainly not the end of the road but rather the beginning of a new chapter for retina specialists where we have a treatment for geographic atrophy. We can tell patients confidently about this, and ultimately we really would love some well-informed patients to make a determination on whether or not they are motivated to carry forward with this. Even in clinical trials, rates of loss to follow-up were quite high by 2 years in some of the studies that have been outputted. And so that’s specifically when we’re looking at DERBY and OAKS. And so when we think about the real world, we know rates of loss, the follow-up are even higher in the real world relative to clinical trials. So this is really exciting for patients, but they have to understand the rationale for why they’re buying in. They also have to realize that even after a couple of years, they may not experience a functional benefit. And so that’s the patient conversation. And then the other conversation amongst retina specialists is when should we expect to see a functional benefit? You know, when is it that there’s a point where the anatomy deviates drastically from sham versus treatment to the point where on average patients had a like a visual improvement in some form?