If you notice this symptom, see your eye doctor right away. Your risk for AMD increases as you get older. People age 55 and older are more likely to have AMD. The risk for AMD is also higher for people who:. Ask your doctor how often you need to get eye exams. Research shows that you may be able to lower your risk of AMD or slow vision loss from AMD by making these healthy choices:. Eye doctors can check for AMD as part of a comprehensive dilated eye exam. The exam is simple and painless — your doctor will give you some eye drops to dilate widen your pupil and then check your eyes for AMD and other eye problems.
Your doctor may also recommend doing a test called optical coherence tomography OCT. In an OCT test, your eye doctor will take pictures of the inside of your eye with a special machine.
Treatment for AMD depends on the stage and type. Eating healthy, getting regular exercise, and quitting smoking can also help. If you have intermediate AMD in 1 or both eyes, special dietary supplements vitamins and minerals may be able to stop it from turning into late AMD.
If you have wet AMD, there are other treatments that may be able to stop further vision loss:. And you can get support to help you live with vision loss from AMD.
But if you do, living with vision loss from AMD can be challenging. Having low vision means that even with glasses, contact lenses, medicine, or surgery, your vision loss makes it hard to do everyday tasks.
The good news is, there are things that can help — like low vision devices and vision rehab services. Vision rehab can help you learn the skills you need to stay independent and active with low vision.
Do you have AMD? This guide makes it easy to talk with your doctor about what this means. It includes:. Researchers are now testing whether this treatment is safe for people. This means your vision is affected when doing activities such as reading, writing, driving, cooking, home repair, and yard work. Although there may be no symptoms in the early stages, a damaged macula can cause objects and faces to appear dark, blurry or distorted.
Dark, blurry areas or whited out areas also appear in the center of vision, and straight lines look bent and uneven. There are some choices that you can make to safeguard your eyesight from AMD. Although you cannot always prevent the development of AMD, you can make some daily changes in your habits and choices. The most important decision to you can make is to visit your eye doctor regularly for comprehensive eye exams.
An eye exam is an essential component of eye disease prevention and can be a helpful assessment tool for whole-body wellness Source: NIH. But your peripheral side vision will still be normal. For instance, imagine you are looking at a clock with hands. This form is quite common. Dry AMD is when parts of the macula get thinner with age and tiny clumps of protein called drusen grow.
You slowly lose central vision. There is no way to treat dry AMD yet. This form is less common but much more serious. Wet AMD is when new, abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina. These vessels may leak blood or other fluids, causing scarring of the macula. This is why it is important to have regular visits to an ophthalmologist. He or she can look for early signs of AMD before you have any vision problems. Back to the top of the article. During an eye exam, your ophthalmologist may ask you to look at an Amsler grid.
This grid helps you notice any blurry, distorted, or blank spots in your field of vision. Your ophthalmologist will also look inside your eye through a special lens. He or she can see if there are changes in the retina and macula.
Your ophthalmologist will put dilating eye drops in your eye to widen your pupil. This allows him or her to look through a special lens at the inside of your eye. Optical coherence tomography OCT is another way to look closely at the retina. A machine scans the retina and provides very detailed images of the retina and macula. Optical coherence tomography angiography OCTA is another way to look closely at the blood vessels in and under the retina.
This is like fluorescein angiography but does not use a dye. Your doctor may do fluorescein angiography to see what is happening with your retina.
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