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Results of the First 120 People Treated with MCS
We have been treating people
with retinal disease in this office for two years now, and we have
just analyzed the results from the first 120 patients that we have
treated. The results have been quite gratifying. One surprise that
we find in analyzing the data is how well the people with the wet
form of aged-related macular degeneration have responded. The conventional
wisdom that was given to Dr. Miller when he first started doing
these procedures was that the patients with "wet" macular degeneration
(exudative macular degeneration) did not respond as well as those
with "dry" macular degeneration (non-exudative macular degeneration).
This data shows that patients with exudative macular degeneration
respond quite positively. The data reflects improvements
as measured in visual acuity testing. Many of these patients have
also shown improvement in their visual fields and in scoring on
color testing, but follow up data in these areas was not consistently
available. Acuity testing was available for all the patients we
have seen and so that is what we present here. The other very pleasant
surprise was how well the patients with Stargardt's Disease have
responded to microcurrent stimulation therapy. Below is data for the numbers
of patients treated with various diagnoses. Some of this
data does not give the clearest reflection of the actual results
for a variety of reasons. Most patients with macular degeneration
show variation in the time of onset and the progression of the disease
between their two eyes. Many of the patients who have the wet or
exudative form of the disease have only had problems with leaking
or bleeding in one eye and not the other while some have shown evidence
for leaking or bleeding in both eyes. Two patients were blind in
one eye for reasons entirely unrelated to their macular degeneration.
For these and other reasons, we also present the data in terms of
the number of eyes treated. This gives a better sense of
the differential response between those eyes with the exudative
form of macular degeneration and the response of those eyes with
the non-exudative form of macular degeneration. Visual acuity testing, if
carefully done, is a reasonable and repeatable measurement of one
aspect of a person's vision. In any given person however there can
be variations in visual acuity on a day to day basis due to such
things as the overall state of their health, presence or absence
of upper respiratory infections, quality and extent of the previous
night's sleep, level of stress, etc. These variations however are
seldom more than one line of change on a visual acuity chart. Because
of these variations, and in part to allow this data to correspond
to data reported by other practitioners who are using microcurrent
stimulation for the treatment of retinal disease, I have chosen
to consider two lines of improvement or change on a visual acuity
chart to be necessary to call a result clinically significant. If
the person's vision is improved by two lines or more as measured
in visual acuity testing, this is probably significant, and not
due to random fluctuation. Results Of all 120 patients treated,
83% (101/120) showed improvement of greater than or equal to two
lines of visual acuity in one or both eyes. If we include those
who had at least one line of improvement in visual acuity, then
93% showed improvement. There were 11 patients (11
of 120) with Stargardt's Disease who were treated and of these all
11 or 100% showed an improvement of greater than or equal to two
lines of visual improvement in one or both eyes. There was one patient
(1 of 120)who had the diagnosis of X-linked Retinoschisis and they
also showed two lines of improvement on visual acuity testing in
both eyes. If we take the 109 patients
with aged-related macular degeneration (ARMD) and break them down
by diagnosis type into exudative (wet) and non-exudative (dry) we
find that of the patients with wet ARMD 88% (43/49) showed an improvement
of two lines or greater on visual acuity testing and of those with
dry ARMD, 77% (46/60) showed improvement of two lines or more on
visual acuity testing. Results by Eyes The tables that follow show
the results by number of eyes treated for patients with ARMD,
Stargardt's and for the Total Eyes treated. By doing some simple arithmetic
on the data on the tables, we can see that of the eyes treated,
the total for all eyes with non-exudative disease was 36% with an
improvement of three lines or greater on a visual acuity test and
for those with exudative disease, 53% showed improvement of three
lines or greater on visual acuity testing following treatment. The
patients who had greater than or equal to four lines of improvement
on visual acuity testing was also quite gratifying with 22% improving
with the dry form of the disease and 32% improving with the wet
form of the disease. In the limited data reported
in conferences by others doing this work (Halloran 1997, Jarding
1997) there had been evidence for significant slowing and stopping
of the progression of disease in those treated and followed over
many years. If there was improvement as the result of treatment,
this improvement was maintained, and even where there was no significant
improvement, the vision stabilized and the stabilization persisted
as long as treatment was continued. I have not been treating people
long enough to comment on this from my own data, but as the data
reported above is similar and in some cases better than the results
reported by others, I would expect that as I continue to follow
these patients, these results will remain stable. Of all the patients and all the eyes treated, there were 7 eyes that showed a worsening of one line as tested by visual acuity testing or 3% of the eyes. There were 3 eyes (in 3 patients) that showed a worsening of two lines of visual acuity which is possibly significant but representing only 1% of the eyes treated. No one had worsening of greater than two lines as determined by visual acuity testing. In all of these patients who have shown worsening, the data that I have comes from the first weeks of treatment. These patients live distant to the office and we have not been able to do follow up testing. There was no evidence of retinal hemorrhage in any of these patients who showed worsening. We would have preferred to find when we analyzed the data that there were no patients who showed any worsening but we are still satisfied that the procedure is safe. Data from some of the research on the effects of supplements on ARMD give us an idea of the natural history of the progression of this disease in populations of people, and this data suggests that the percentage of people showing worsening of their vision in a population such as the one we studied would be far higher. The data also tells us that the percentage of people we are seeing with improvements is a result of their treatments with microcurrent stimulation therapy. As we continue with treatments, continued efforts are being made to try and understand why some people respond better than others and we will continue to strive to improve the protocols and techniques. Return to Macular Degeneration Home Page
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