More News from the Macular Society Meeting, 2006

More News from the Macular Society Meeting

I promised you some more news from the Macular Society Meeting:

We know that light laser treatment often results in a reduction of drusen in eyes with AMD but we don’t know if this is good or not. There are at least three studies investigating whether light laser treatment to the maculae of patients with drusen reduces the risk of wet AMD and/or vision loss. At the Macula Society Meeting, Dr. Thomas Friberg reported the results of the Prophylactic Treatment of AMD (PTAMD) trial. In this study, 639 patients who had bilateral drusen were randomized to receive very light laser treatment in one eye. The infrared (810nm) laser was used. The study found that laser was of no benefit over a three-year period of follow-up.

The Drusen Laser Study was performed in The United Kingdom and found that prophylactic laser (argon green or dye yellow laser) actually hastened the onset of wet AMD in the fellow eye of patients who had wet AMD in the other eye. In the group of patients who had drusen only (no neovascularization) in both eyes, laser to one eye didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

I am the principal investigator at The University of Iowa for The Complications of AMD Trial (CAPT). The CAPT is the largest trial testing whether light laser treatment to one eye of a patient with bilateral drusen reduces the risk of wet AMD or vision loss. The patients in the CAPT have been followed for five years and the results will probably be announced in the late fall of 2006.

For now though, I wouldn’t recommend prophylactic laser treatment for eyes with drusen only.

References:

1. Friberg TR, Results of the Bilateral Arm of the PTAMD (Prophylactic Treatment of AMD). Paper at The Macular Society Meeting, North San Diego, February 24, 2006.

2. Owens, SL, Bunce, C, Brannon AJ, Wing, Wen, et. al. Prophylactic Laser Treatment Hastens Choroidal Neovascularization in Unilateral Age-Related Maculopathy: Final Results of the Drusen Laser Study. Am J Ophthalmol 2006;141:276-281.