Sorry I haven't posted to the blog in a few days. I am in Hawaii attending a meeting and vacationing with my family. Nothing real new in ophthalmology, except for results of the SAILOR trial released which basically shows that lucentis works well in classic choroidal neovascular membranes... The difference in mean change in visual acuity of 18 letters for patients treated with 0.3 mg of Lucentis and 21 letters for patients treated with 0.5 mg of Lucentis from study entry compared to those treated with PDT at 12 months. In the first year of this two-year study, patients treated with Lucentis gained an average of 8.5 letters in the 0.3 mg dose group and 11 letters in the 0.5 mg dose group compared to patients treated with PDT, who lost an average of 9.5 letters.

Other impt findings:
95% of patients lost less than three lines of vision at one year
About 1/3 of patients gained three or more lines of vision at one year (versus 6% with pdt)
About 1/3 of patients were 20/40 at the end of one year (vs 3% treated with pdt)

So avastin and lucentis are clearly coming out as the best treatment options for wet armd.
But still the great majority of patients are going to LOSE vision even with this treatment.
Also the above treatments do not address vision loss from dry ARMD.
Thus, I believe there is still a very important role for 360 degree macular rotation surgery. The key for success with this surgery is having it done as early as possible in my opinion. However, I also think that if a patient's prior treatment is an antiVEGF molecule as opposed to pdt, visual results after macular rotation may be better!
Aloha!