9:07 AM
Keshav Bhat
The number of older Americans getting help for fading eyesight almost tripled by 2007 from a decade earlier as the nation aged," according to a study published in the October issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Medicare recipients in 2007 received 812,413 injections into the eye with drugs like Roche’s Lucentis for macular degeneration or Avastin, up from fewer than 5,000 a year from 1997 to 2001, a study in the Archives of Ophthalmology found. Use of rival drugs, laser treatments and photodynamic therapy, such as QLT Inc.’s Visudyne, plunged, according to Dr Ramulu and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University’s Wilmer Eye Institute.
Approximately 1.5 percent of those older than 40, have age-related macular degeneration, according to the National Eye Institute. The number is expected to reach 3 million by 2020 as the population ages, the agency says.
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