Macular Degeneration Treatment
Case Report: 83-year-old woman with AMD treated with RevitalVision
Patient:
83-year-old woman, blind in her left eye due to thrombosis at age 6, and with 30° prism exotropia.
Right eye with dry stage of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) for the past 20 years and with early stage of cataract.
Baseline examination:
BCVA
Right – 6/30 (20/100).
Left – LP (Light Perception)
Subjective refraction: Right +1.50/ -1.25 x 101
Examined and followed up by Opt. MSc. Eyal Berko, Givatayim, Israel.
Treatment process:
A company representative helped the patient (remotely by phone) to run the RV software on her PC and followed up with a 40-minute remote guided training session. It should be noted that the patient had no early experience using a PC at all.
The patient began with 3-4 training sessions per week, each session lasting approximately 30 minutes.
The patient returned to the same clinic for a follow-up VA exam after 20, 40, and 60 sessions.
Clinical outcome:
After 20 sessions:
BCVA – 6/20 (20/63)
After 40 sessions:
BCVA – 6/15 (20/50)
After 60 sessions:
BCVA – 6/12 (20/40)
Summary:
The patient improved 4 lines on the VA test chart and reported subjective vision improvement in her daily activity.
This interesting case report, demonstrating extraordinary vision improvement in an 83 year old patient suffering from AMD, joins dozens of other reports, indicating significant improvement in patients suffering from stable retinal diseases (AMD, Congenital MD, Stargardt, RP), as well as other eye diseases.
How does RevitalVision improve vision in AMD?
RevitalVision is clinically proven (with several controlled randomized studies) to improve vision in adult amblyopia, and has received FDA approval for amblyopia aged 9 or older. Later, controlled randomized trials proved its efficacy in improving uncorrected vision in patients with a minor refractive error, enabling the brain to better process blurred images into sharper ones. The improved image processing seems to compensate to an extent for a blurred image transferred from the retina.
The treatment exploits residual neuroplasticity existing in adults, and through repetitive performance of controlled patient-specific visual tasks, creates a perceptual learning process.
Possible explanation:
It is possible that lack of prolonged effective cortical stimulation, caused by a blurred or damaged image transferred from the retina to the brain, results in reduced cortical activity.
Thus, in addition to the anatomical damage to the eye, there is secondary gradually-evolved damage to the quality of the image processing in the brain.
Similar to amblyopia, effective stimulation, and perceptual learning processes enable significant improvement in cortical activity, resulting in improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, despite the absence of any anatomical changes during the course of the disease.
Further controlled randomized studies are needed to validate the efficacy of RevitalVision in stable retinal disease patients.
Shlomo Abramson
Optometrist
RevitalVision.
