As the name implies, this is an age-related blinding eye disease. It occurs most often in the elderly, but can also develop in middle-aged people, with the prevalence increasing each year as age increases. It develops in the macula, a particularly important structure in the fundus of the eye. Each of us has a normal structure in the fundus of the eye, located right in the center of the fundus, called the macula. Why is it called the macula? Because this area contains a lot of lutein, which is yellow, making this area slightly yellowish in color, especially when viewed pathologically, hence the name macula. The central macula is about 500 microns in diameter and is one of the most important parts of the body’s visual function. Macular degeneration is precisely a pathology that occurs in or near the center of the macular area, which will show pathological changes such as choroidal capillaries, vitreous membrane, degenerative changes of pigment epithelium, mainly referring to hemorrhage, exudation, edema, scarring, etc. Age-related macular degeneration is one of the leading causes of blindness in western countries, and as China’s population tends to age, the prevalence and absolute number of age-related macular degeneration increases year by year, gradually becoming one of the important blindness-causing eye diseases. Many patients have obvious symptoms at an early stage, feeling that they can’t see things clearly, distortion and deformation occurs, such as originally a straight line, but what they see is not straight anymore, and their vision decreases, leading to difficulties in life and reading. Some patients feel a significant loss of central vision, and the central part of the visual field is always blurred, as if something is blocking it. Middle-aged and elderly people who like to read books and newspapers or watch TV, the word or picture they want to see happens to be invisible, and a black shadow obscures the middle of the visual field. This black shadow is related to the area of bleeding and edema, if the area is small, the scope of the black shadow is small, if the scope of bleeding is large, or edema, the scope of scarring is large, which will eventually lead to blindness. Some patients have abnormal color vision, and when both eyes look at the same object, the color is different, and even the size is different. Others feel a sense of dark shadows, flashes of light in front of their eyes, and even diplopia. More severe cases may also have sudden vision loss. However, there are also many patients who often do not have any symptoms in the early stage. These patients have obvious lesions in the macular area of the eye, but they do not affect their vision much. What are the causes of the development of age-related macular degeneration? First, it is genetic. Secondly, it is lifestyle habits. The relationship between genes and this disease is being studied at home and abroad, and several genes have been found to be more definitely related to macular degeneration, so if a patient has macular degeneration, the chances of his family members to have the disease are also increased, especially at the age of 40 or above, the fundus should be checked every one or two years. On the other hand, smoking and hyperlipidemia are more definite causative factors and modifiable risk factors. People who smoke are at least twice as likely to suffer from macular degeneration. People who are obese and hyperlipidemic are best controlled and have a balanced diet. Especially, you should eat more vegetables and fruits because they contain a lot of chlorophyll, zeaxanthin, lycopene, vitamin C and so on, which have antioxidant function. Now there is a theory that age-related macular degeneration is caused by excessive oxidation causing chronic cell damage in the macula. Of course, we should also pay attention to eye hygiene and combine work and rest. Long hours on the computer screen, cell phone screen, or looking at the strong light is harmful to the eyes. So what are the ways to detect age-related macular degeneration at an early stage? First of all, we recommend you to have regular health checkups, especially regular comprehensive medical checkups, which are not only blood tests and chest X-ray, but also eye examinations, which can directly observe the fundus of the eyes and see the macula, and it is better to have a dilated pupil examination, as there are very professional fundus examination instruments that can accurately detect the lesions. This is one of the methods of early detection. You can also detect blurred vision and distorted vision in time by your own symptoms. The way to do this is to alternately close your eyes and compare whether there is a difference between the two eyes in seeing things. Why do this? Because some patients already have poor vision in one eye with fundus hemorrhage, but good vision in the other eye, so they ignore their symptoms until they find macular degeneration during physical examination, which delays the treatment. Therefore, for middle-aged and elderly people, whether you have symptoms of blurred vision and distorted vision or not, we recommend you to have regular fundus examination. The disease should be detected and treated as early as possible to obtain satisfactory treatment results. This article is authorized by Dr. Yannan Wang.