A nurse at Royal Surrey County Hospital has helped stabilise and improve the vision of her 1,000th patient with macular degeneration.
Ophthalmology sister and AMD lead Keri Eccarius has performed her milestone intravitreal injection, just two years after she became the Trust’s first nurse qualified to perform the procedure.
The drug helps reduce the symptoms of patients suffering from wet age related macular degeneration (AMD).
AMD is a painless eye condition that causes you to lose central vision, sometimes in both eyes.
For sufferers this can mean that reading can become more difficult, colours are less vibrant and they can struggle to recognise faces.
AMD does not affect your peripheral vision (side vision), which means it will not cause complete blindness.
When injected into the eye on a regular basis with a very fine needle the medicine can help prevent the abnormal blood vessels growing, leaking and bleeding, causing distortion of vision and sight loss.
As a result some of the sight lose caused by AMD can be restored, although there is currently no cure.
Keri’s patients are all over the age of 50 years, with many aged in in their 80s and 90s.
“For most patients their vision either improves or stabilises as a result of the injection,” said Eccarius. “Without this, many elderly and vulnerable patients would lose their central vision and this could mean that they are unable to carry on living independently.
“I am delighted to have been able to assist over 1,000 patients and now the Trust has a second nurse able to perform the injection, which means we are able to help even more people.”
