Macular Oedema
Macular oedema treatment
If your optometrist or ophthalmologist suspects you may have macular oedema, they can examine your eye to check. They will give you eye drops to dilate your pupil so they can see into your eye better. They’ll then look at the back of your eye using a slit lamp, which shines a light into your eye and uses a magnifying tool to help them see it better. They might also do an OCT (optical coherence tomography) scan and a visual acuity test, which is where they show you rows of letters decreasing in size and ask you which ones you can read.
If you’re diagnosed with macular oedema, there are various options for treatment, such as intra eye injections, or surgery. The best choice of treatment will depend on the cause of your macular oedema. It’s important to treat the underlying cause, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, and then treat the damage to your retina.
If your macular oedema is caused by an inflammatory disease, you may be given steroids. Diabetic macular oedema is likely to be treated using injections into your eye. You’ll be given a local anaesthetic, and the injection goes into the corner of your eye so you won’t see it going in.
Laser surgery is an option for treating macular oedema when it doesn’t affect the centre of the macula. However, this treatment option is usually used to prevent the problem from worsening, rather than to cure it completely. Another surgical treatment option is vitrectomy. This involves removing some of the jelly-like fluid from the inside of your eyeball.