Abstract
Purpose:
To identify predictive factors and findings in early stage of bilateral age-related macular degeneration (AMD) developed from monocular age-related macular degeneration.
Methods:
: Experimental group for this study was established with 34 eyes of 34 patients, available for follow-up study for over one year, chosen from patients who were diagnosed with unilateral age-related macular degeneration at initial examination but developed bilateral age-related macular degeneration between June of 2008 and December of 2009. Retrospective study was also conducted by forming a control group with the same number, 34 eyes of 34 patients who were diagnosed with monocular AMD but without the incidence in their fellow eyes during the same period.
Results:
Average age of the experimental group was 72.5±6.46 while the control group was 69.09±7.73, and the ratio between male and female was 18:16 in the experimental group and 19:15 in the control group, where there was no significant difference detected between two groups. Significant difference was again undetected from the visual acuity at initial examination as the experimental group recorded 0.14±0.16 (logMAR) whereas the control group showed 0.13±0.19 (logMAR). For early findings with Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), pigmentary epithelial detachment (PED) was found from 13 cases (38.2%) in the experimental group compared to 5 cases (14.7%) in the control group; and serous retinal detachment (SRD) was also found from 13 cases of the experimental group whereas none was discovered from the control group; therefore, there was a significant difference (p<0.05) between two groups.
Conclusions:
The findings of PED and SRD can be considered as significant predictive factors for initial findings of unilateral age-related macular degeneration developed from monocular AMD.
Keywords: 412 age-related macular degeneration •
701 retinal pigment epithelium