VIDEO: Geographic atrophy has ‘profound effect’ on patients’ vision, mental health

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Geographic atrophy has a profound effect on not only a patient's vision, but also on their mental health as well. It's a progressive, previously irreversible form of macular degeneration, with progressive loss of vision, and it really has a profound effect on patient's quality of life, and as we know, any progressive disease which affects quality of life is going to have an effect on their patient's mental status. Giving the patients the hope that breakthrough drugs are now slowing the progression or in the future may actually reverse the progression of this disease is really important to not only a patient's vision, but also to their generalized well being. When we counsel patients who have geographic atrophy about their disease, I think it's really important that for the first time, we can give them hope. Before, we viewed geographic atrophy as a irreversible, progressive disease, and now, we can actually tell patients that there is hope that we can slow the progression of this disease, and hopefully in the future, we'll be able to stop the progression, and maybe even reverse it.