gms | German Medical Science

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of legal blindness in people 50 years of age and older in the developed world. Spectrum and significance of operative options in the treatment of AMD - especially of exudative AMD - have increased significantly in the past years. While laser photocoagulation therapy used to be the only treatment that had been shown to be efficient, a variety of interventional treatment approaches has become available including photodynamic therapy (PDT), transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT), surgical membrane extraction and its modifications like full macular translocation (FMT) or limited macular translocations as well as combination with antiangiogenetic drugs. Benefit and side effects of these treatment modalities are still under investigation in randomized multicentre trials. As the number of cases performed and followed worldwide is still not sufficient to demonstrate and compare efficiency of these treatment options, we lack standardized international guidelines in the treatment of AMD to follow. Aim of this review is to compare these therapy approaches in regard of evidence based criteria using appropriate statistical methods and evaluate their significance for the treatment of non-exudative and exudative AMD with their subtypes. With increasing prevalence of AMD evidence based evaluation of applied treatment modalities seems to be relevant and critical.