VIDEO: Geographic atrophy awareness key to diagnosis, treatment

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The answer to that is very simply, that if you don't diagnose the disease, you're not going to treat it. A hundred percent of the diseases that don't get diagnosed, don't get treated. And it's really important for ophthalmologists in general and again, more than ophthalmologists, optometrists as well, every eye care professional should be aware of the clinical findings of geographic atrophy and make the diagnosis. And refer when the patient needs to be referred. It's very frustrating that we have a disease now that does have therapeutic intervention, and it's incumbent upon us to know that these patients now have an avenue of therapy and we need to get these patients into the hands of the right retina specialist who can manage these patients effectively. For years, geographic atrophy was either not diagnosed, or it was missed, or it wasn't referred, because there was very little that we thought we could do about it. But today, in 2023, we know that we do have therapies to manage this disease and that's why it's become more important than ever that we need to diagnose the disease and refer when appropriate. One of the little known facts about geographic atrophy is that it's extraordinarily common. As a matter of fact, it's estimated that there are more than 8 million patients in the world who have geographic atrophy. And it may be just as common as wet age-related macular degeneration, so that this is a very common disease that's kind of hiding in plain sight. And it really behooves us to make this diagnosis as early as possible. It's estimated that there are probably about a million people in the United States who have geographic atrophy and most of them have not been diagnosed.