Wills Eye Hospital has announced that it has treated the first RESCUE trial patient in the United States enrolled in an FDA-approved gene therapy vision research study. A product called GS010 (GenSight Biologics), can be injected right into the eye and, in a sense, “re-wire” or lower the patient’s risk for getting the disease. The patient has [Read More]
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Similarity of Anti-VEGF Drugs Confirmed For DME Treatment
A rigorous clinical trial has found that individuals with diabetic macular edema (DME), whose visual acuity is 20/50 or worse, gained more improvement with Eylea than with Avastin. Aside from that, no significant difference was found among the three anti-VEGF drugs (including Lucentis) in subjects with 20/32 or 20/40 vision at the start of treatment. By two years, 41 percent of participants in the [Read More]
Large Study Shows 1 in 5 People With Vision Loss Experience Hallucinations
A new study conducted by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) has found that one in five Canadians with vision loss who were surveyed experience visual hallucinations, known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS). The study, titled “Prevalence of visual hallucinations in a national low vision client population”, published in the most recent issue [Read More]
Future Sustained Drug Delivery Methods for Choroidal Neovascularization
During the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Retina Subspecialty Day in 2015, Peter K. Kaiser, MD, described six alternative methods being looked at for delivery of anti-VEGF drugs into the retinas of individuals experiencing choroidal neovascularization (CNV). Periodic intraocular injections are currently the only procedure for halting damaging blood vessel growth and leakage. Injections are expensive, time-consuming, and burdensome on the patients, so [Read More]
Low Vision Rehabilitation Needs More Emphasis on Communication and Social Skills
Lea Hyvärinen, MD, PhD (Honorary Professor, Rehabilitation Sciences at Rehabilitation and Education in Blindness or Impairment of Vision in Dortmund, Germany) has described social difficulties caused by types of blindness and visual impairment. In her paper, “Effect of Vision Loss on Communication and Social Skills” she writes that “many problems in communication and social skills are due to misunderstandings [Read More]