Abstract
Purpose:
It is difficult to predict which patients with early (E) to intermediate (I) age-related macular degeneration (AMD) are at the greatest risk of developing advanced AMD within a reasonable period of time. The goal of this study is to determine whether performance on simple, non-standard vision tests can improve the prediction of AMD progression. This presentation will describe and present data from the baseline session of a longitudinal assessment of vision function in people with E/I AMD.
Methods:
Participants tested to date (N=48, mean age =72.7 [SD =12.1], range: 56-91 years, 64% female) are patients with E/I AMD, and age-matched controls (C) with no AMD. All eyes have best corrected high contrast acuity ≤0.30 logMAR (20/40 or better).<br /> A dilated eye exam and fundus photos are used to confirm AMD status. Each eye is categorized using the clinical classification scale of Ferris et al. (Ophthalmology, 2013): E (medium drusen only), I (large drusen and/or AMD pigmentary abnormalities), and C (no drusen, or small drusen only).<br /> In the vision test session, participants are refracted and then tested monocularly on a battery of vision tests with appropriate correction for the 40 cm test distance. The test battery includes: high contrast acuity under conditions of high and low luminance, low contrast acuity at low luminance, contrast sensitivity under conditions of high and low luminance, shape discrimination hyperacuity, reading performance, color vision, flicker modulation sensitivity at a frequency of 14 Hz, and glare recovery.
Results:
Preliminary results on the sample to date reveal statistically significant differences between early to intermediate AMD participants and controls on all measures, except high contrast acuity measured at high luminance and glare recovery. The E/I group shows greater variability than C, with some AMD patients showing results similar to the C group, and others showing considerably reduced function. The latter are the patients we hypothesize will progress to advanced AMD in a shorter period of time.
Conclusions:
This ongoing longitudinal study will test the hypothesis that non-standard vision function measures can predict AMD progression. The preliminary data from this baseline sample are promising. Most of the measures tested show sensitivity to E/I AMD, but with sufficient variation within each of the measures to be good candidates for predicting who will develop advanced AMD.