Living with GA

The following video was developed by Apellis Pharmaceuticals, and Dr Holekamp was compensated for her time. This video is not intended to include medical advice. You should consult your doctor with any questions or concerns you have about Geographic Atrophy (GA).

VO: My name is Nancy Holekamp, I am a retina specialist in St. Louis, Missouri, and today I'd like to talk to you about Geographic Atrophy, or GA.

When I speak to my patients about GA, I tell them it is a very advanced form of age-related macular degeneration and the most important risk factors are age and genetics, so family history matters, but other risk factors include diet and obesity.

To be clear, age and family history are the leading risk factors for GA, so you have to have both age and the genetics in order to get GA.

To explain GA, I often show patients their scan like the one you're seeing now. And here we see little accumulations of waste products called drusen that accumulate in the macula. The macula is just a fancy word for the center of the retina which is the center of your vision. In an eye with GA, the drusen are always growing closer to the center point of vision, which means the GA is always growing closer to the center point of vision.

So as the drusen grow and enlarge, then collapse into atrophy, they will form regions that you can actually draw a line around, almost like a geographic area or a map, and that's why we call it Geographic Atrophy.

Atrophy means cell death, so the cells in your retina are slowly dying. Early on you may not notice any change in your vision, but as it progresses it will eventually affect your central vision. Please keep in mind that while you may never lose peripheral vision, GA does cause irreversible vision impairment.

What you're seeing on the screen right now is an example of a scotoma or a blind spot that will affect your vision over time. But this is just an example; each person experiences GA differently.

While your central vision may be impacted, you should always maintain the ability to move around and take care of basic needs.

However, you may need to make significant life changes and ultimately depend on others for things such as driving. Getting a proper diagnosis of GA is very important. A diagnosis leads to prognosis, which helps you understand how this disease will affect you over time.

Science is learning more and more all the time about GA, and we are becoming more knowledgeable about this disease.

If you have vision symptoms, be sure to call your eye doctor who may refer you to a retina specialist. Seeing a doctor is critical.