A Success Story

I thought I’d tell you about this patient with AMD, since he had such an outstanding response to Lucentis®. He is 73 years old and had a six week history of vision loss when he came to see me on August 23. His visual acuity, at that time, was count fingers at one foot.

The color picture shows his macula in the left eye. The black and white photos are from a fluorescein angiogram and show a large area of choroidal neovascularization that leaks profusely. The new blood vessels extend just under the center of the macula (also called the fovea). The fourth picture is an OCT which shows fluid under the retina.

August 23rd visit

He received three injections of Lucentis and promptly improved. The 11/15 photos still show the neovascularization but it appears inactive. The OCT shows no fluid. His visual acuity has improved to 20/40.

November 15th visit

I think he had such a great improvement because the new blood vessels just reached beneath the center of the fovea. They had probably not been beneath the fovea for very long. This idea is supported because, although the OCT showed fluid beneath the retina, there was no fluid or degeneration within the retina itself.

The other point though, is that six weeks is too long to wait before seeing your eye doctor. This was the first eye of the man involved with wet AMD and often people don’t realize the urgency of seeing someone. Had we seen him earlier, the new blood vessels would have been smaller and he probably would have had an even better result. As it is, he’s been very lucky so far, but we’ll need to follow him to make sure the vessels don’t start leaking again.