Prognosis

Age-Related Eye Disease Study Group (AREDS) category 2 (early AMD)

Typically, visual acuity remains unaffected unless progression results.

Patients have a 1.3% risk over 5 years of progressing to late AMD.[52]

No treatments have been demonstrated to be effective for this category of disease.[40]

AREDS category 3 (intermediate AMD)

Typically, visual acuity remains unaffected unless progression results.

In one study, patients with intermediate AMD had an 18% risk over 5 years of progressing to late AMD.[52]

Another study found that 5- and 10-year rates of progression to exudative AMD in patients with intermediate AMD were 14.8% and 28.4%, respectively.[113]

AREDS category 4 (late AMD)

Patients with unilateral disease have a 43% chance over 5 years of developing late AMD in the other eye.[52]

Geographic atrophy (dry) AMD tends to result in less severe visual impairment than exudative (wet) AMD. In contrast, wet AMD, if untreated, will result in significant visual loss (doubling of the visual angle or worse) in over half of patients over the following several years.[104][105][114][115]

In one study of patients with geographic atrophy, 13.8% of patients developed exudative AMD over a mean follow-up of 4.1 years.[116]

In patients with neovascularisation secondary to AMD treated with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors (ranibizumab or bevacizumab), the proportion of patients with visual acuity of 20/200 or worse was 6% at baseline, 5% at 2 years, and 20% at 5 years.[117]​

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