Macular Lens and AMD

Inside our tiny eye, there is a small yellow spot. If we compare it to a walnut, this yellow spot is only the size of a pinhead. The area, the size of a pinhead, at the back-inside part of our eye is so crucial that thanks to this tiny spot, Leonardo could create Mona Lisa, and Michelangelo sculpted the David statue. This place serves as an ultra-modern sensor that perceives the surrounding world, our environment, and our loved ones as visual stimuli and sends them to the visual center in our brain, the main headquarters.

Today, there are numerous congenital or acquired eye diseases worldwide. One of these is macular degeneration, a type of disease that is prevalent globally but can have its adverse effects mitigated.

The macula is a 4-5 mm region located in the inner part of the eye tissue’s back wall at the retina layer. All color and highly sensitive visual processes take place here, hence it is also referred to as sensitive vision or central vision. However, the peripheral area around the macula is called weak vision or peripheral vision.

What is the Special Macula Lens?
The special lens known as the macula lens is a type of lens used in macular degeneration, also known as yellow spot degeneration. This lens, newly introduced in our country, is specifically developed for the yellow spot disease. It can improve the patient’s vision by an average of 30% to 37%.

Developed as a result of the work of English doctor Bobby Qureshi, this lens has been used on approximately 1500 people over the past three years, providing significant improvement in both near and distant vision in macular degeneration cases.

The patients’ visual quality has shown an increase of 20% to 30%.

So, what is macular degeneration, and what are the stages of its treatment? Just as our skin wrinkles and forms lines, and moles begin to appear as we age, similar changes occur in our main perception organ, the macula. However, unlike these changes in our skin, the alterations in the macula do not give us a more mature appearance; instead, they diminish our vision.
There are two types of macular degeneration: dry type, which involves only color changes, waste material accumulation, and loss of vision cells. In this stage, supportive treatment and frequent check-ups are sufficient; it progresses slowly, staying in the same stage for years without causing sudden vision loss. The second type is wet type, where in addition to the changes seen in the dry type, pathological vascularization occurs, leading to bleeding, leakage of protein and fluid outside the vessels, resulting in sudden vision loss. Since there is a risk of permanent vision loss, urgent treatment is necessary. In the treatment of wet type macular degeneration, we now have more advanced methods compared to five years ago. We have two methods that shrink and eliminate pathological vessels without damaging vision cells: laser treatment that only eliminates pathological vessels, and in addition to this, intraocular drug application that inhibits the formation of vascularization, reducing bleeding and fluid formation. Depending on the clinical situation, we can apply these treatment methods together or separately. The key is to diagnose our patients in a timely manner so that we can administer early treatment.