Current therapy for retinal vein occlusion.

Retinal vein occlusion is a common retinal vascular disorder causing visual deterioration in the elderly. Vision-threatening complications include macular ischemia, neovascularisations, and vitreous hemorrhages. There are central and branch retinal vein occlusions as well as their ischemic and nonischemic subtypes. Branch occlusion and nonischemic cases are associated with better prognosis, often with good recovery of visual acuity. There have been various modes of therapy used for this disease but with little or poor effect. Due to the lack of effective monotherapy for retinal vein occlusions, there is probably a need to combine the therapy approaches (Fig. 4, Ref. 24). Full Text in PDF www.elis.sk.

Fundus autofluorescence in age-related macular disease imaged with a laser scanning ophthalmoscope.

Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) as the most common cause of legal blindness in industrialized countries remains an incompletely understood, complex retinal disease. Prophylactic and therapeutic options are still limited. Sensitive diagnostic tools and prognostic markers to evaluate disease stage and progression in the individual patient are needed. The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) plays a key role in the disease process both in early and late variants of AMD. An excessive accumulation of lipofuscin granules in the lysosomal compartment of RPE cells represents a common downstream pathogenetic pathway in various retinal diseases including AMD. Fundus autofluorescence (FAF) imaging allows the visualization of the topographic distribution of lipofuscin over large retinal areas (Fig. 3, Ref. 13).