Macular Degeneration Treatment at Best Practice Eyecare Ophthalmologist Sunshine Coast

Macular degeneration occurs when this “garbage collection” breaks down and waste products from the retina build up underneath the RPE. These deposits, known as ‘drusen’, are easily seen by your eye care professional as yellow spots.

As macular degeneration progresses, vision loss occurs because the RPE cells die or because the RPE cells fail to prevent blood vessels from the choroid from growing into the retina.

In the early stages of macular degeneration, when drusen first appear, you may not realise anything is wrong and you may still have normal vision. That is the best time to detect the disease.

Your eye works very similarly to a camera. The lens at the front of your eye focuses the image onto the retina which lines the back of the eye. The retina acts like the film in the camera. The image is sent from the retina through the optic nerve and interpreted by our brain.

The Macula is the very centre of the retina. You are reading this text using your macula. It is responsible for your central, detailed vision. It is responsible for your ability to read, distinguish faces, drive a car and any other activities which require fine vision.

Your peripheral retina gives you the ability to see general shapes and gives you your ‘get-about’ or peripheral vision.

To find out more about Macular Degeneration, visit the Macular Disease Foundation Australia website or read our latest article on how Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) can be linked to underlying heart damage.