SOME CAUSES OF VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

Macular Degeneration
Reproduced courtesy of the Macular Degeneration Foundation

An Overview of MD

Statistic:   A new case of adult Macular Degeneration is diagnosed every three minutes in the United States of America.

Your retina contains an extraordinary photo-sensitive array of cells that line the back of your eye.  The light falling onto these cells in the retina is transformed into electrical signals which are transmitted to those brain centers that create the complex and wonderful experience of vision.

The most concentrated collection of photo-sensitive cells in your retina, including those that enable critical color and fine detail vision, are found in the "Bulls-Eye" center zone in an area called the macula.

 

		Macular degeneration is the imprecise historical name given to a very poorly understood group of diseases that cause sight-sensing cells in the macular zone of the retina to malfunction or lose function. The result is debilitating loss of vital central or detail vision. The brain cleverly learns to compensate and fill in the missing part of the picture in early cases with spotty macular cell damage or dysfunction so that most people only present to their ophthalmologist when disease is fairly advanced.

Compared to the huge numbers of people affected (over 13 million), research efforts towards discovery of cause and cure by government, public and private institutions are inappropriately small. The Macular Degeneration Foundation is at the forefront of efforts to educate the public, patients, professionals and deliver science-based solutions.