Macular Degeneration - If you understand these words then you know something about the harsh reality of living with the problems of central vision disease.  This was the future my mother had to look forward to when she was diagnosed with macular degeneration -- a future of gradual vision loss.  Until then, I had not heard of macular degeneration.  She was shown large televisions, magnifying glasses and brighter lights.  My mother had been a pilot in World War II and she loves flying.  As she was affected more affected by macular degeneration, I arranged for her to take her last airplane ride.

By a twist of fate, my friend Lee Mize was developing a viewing aid for his friend with macular degeneration.  Lee's background of forty years of problem solving in the fields of aerospace, marine, structural engineering, composite development and production and a year of designs and trials lead to a first model.  He asked me to try his new aid on my mother.  She loved them.  Once again, she enjoys watching television and sightseeing.  

MACULAR DEGENERATION

Macular Degeneration is a disorder of the retina.  The central retina, or macula, is responsible for visual details that control important functions like reading, recognizing faces and watching television.  More than 12 million Americans are affected by macular degeneration with dry macular degeneration accounting for 90% of the cases, wet macular degeneration accounting for 10% of the cases.

Generally speaking, age-related macular degeneration whether wet or dry affects the center of the retina causing loss of central vision in one or both eyes, reducing the central visual field.  By imaginative use of residual sight, people cope with macular degeneration by constantly shifting their head. 

Even people with perfectly normal vision have a blind spot.  If a person looks at a faint star or dim point if light, it will disappear.  Looking off center, the star appears.  This is because the area of the retina where the optic nerve enters the back of the eye is essentially a blind spot.  The brain has gotten used to this blind spot and compensates by shifting the gaze up or down or side to side.  Those suffering  the early stages of macular degeneration, compensate the same way.  MacuMir system uses reflective imaging to help the brain 'see' through the blind spot. 

"The eye is an optical device for focusing light on the retina where neural circuitry begins," says Robert H. Worts, chief of the sensorimotor laboratory of the National Eye Institute.  "To analyze vision from that point on you have to address the brain.  How this translates into perception is bewildering."

While there is no known cure for macular degeneration, there is a patented product that has given renewed independence to many -- MacuMir.