Video: Do I have to repeat the Age-Related Macular Degeneration treatment?

In this video I talk about the repetition of the Age-Related Macular Degeneration treatment and I am explaining why doing it privately may be better for you.

Well, wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration has been revolutionised by this treatment. Unfortunately we haven’t managed to get treatment that’s one-off. The medicine that we give to the back of the eye by these injections only really lasts about four weeks to possibly six weeks.

The idea behind medicines is to shrink the blood vessels associated with Age-Related Macular Degeneration, but it doesn’t last very long. And we need to give repeated injections to get a sustained response to make sure this blood vessels shrink completely and don’t go back to reforming.

Now there are some patients who respond quite well to about three or four injections and don’t need any other injections thereafter. But the majority of my patients require maybe ten to twelve injections over two years.

There are some numbers of patients who need further injections after that. But generally, in the third or fourth year, the number of frequency of injections is much less. And majority my patients get to a point where the blood vessels do shrink and they don’t come back again and the vision is restored long term.

Now you would always be monitored once your treatment have been stopped because we don’t want you to develop a problem in the future and that’s the advantage of private health care. In the National Health Service, unfortunately is a delay sometimes to when you get your treatment, and sometimes you don’t get the intervals. So, you may need interval treatment every month, and it maybe pushed to six or eight weeks and you do get a sub-optimal treatment if that does happen.

And that’s unfortunately due to the constraints of the National Health Service, but in private health care we have a very strict regime where we get our patients in on time and with me you’ll get an injection every month if you need it, according to the medical evidence to treat you effectively.

Now if you want to discuss any of those further options with me, and how we treat or what interval you require, then please feel free to phone the number in the end of the video and we can discuss that in greater depth.