How to diagnose geographic atrophy earlier

Video transcript

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Carl Danzig, MD: Hi, I'm Carl Danzig, from the Rand Eye Institute, in Deerfield Beach, Florida. I'm excited to be here today in Chicago for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. It's so great to be here in person.

You know, the one topic that I have a lot of passionate about, amongst others, is dry AMD with geographic atrophy. I expect this will be a widely discussed topic here at today's meeting. Later today, there'll be multiple presentations in the breakout development section and early clinical trial results section. So I'm excited to highlight that, you know, the one thing about this huge unmet need in the retina space is, well, how do we identify it? How do we diagnose it, and I use the Heidelberg Spectralis machine to identify geography attribute using the OCT, and fundus autofluorescence imaging.

I also use the region finder to identify the size of the lesion and map its growth compared to prior images. This allows me to better diagnose these patients. It allows me to see which pages may be enrolled in the clinical trial, which patients may be best suited for, hopefully, an emerging therapy that could come out next year. And the more that we can diagnose these patients, the better it is.

Furthermore, so many of these patients exists outside of the retina specialist’s practice, and though they do take up a fair amount of patients in my clinic schedule, a lot of these patients live in other doctor's offices, whether the optometrist or the general ophthalmologist. And the sooner that people can identify these patients, the sooner we can get them treated hopefully, and preserve their vision. Because the goal of treating GA over the long term is to preserve their central vision. Help them see clearer, longer.