Macular Degeneration (cont.)
Macular Degeneration Symptoms
Symptoms of age-related macular degeneration include the following:
- Blurred or decreased central close-up and distance vision, which is often delayed because patients subconsciously ignore the eye with worst vision prior to development of the condition in the previously good eye.
- Blind spots, or scotomas, are a direct result of lost macular function.
- Straight lines look irregular or bent, called metamorphopsia, and objects
appear a different color or shape in each of the eyes.
- Objects appearing smaller in one eye than the other, called micropsia, may also indicate a swelling and bulging of the macula, leading to a greater distance between the individual photoreceptors, which in turn causes the brain to interpret the object as smaller than seen by the good eye.
John D. Sheppard, MD, MMSc
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