New Treatment Offers the Hope of Sight

A top multi-disciplinary team at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW) have just started a clinical trial at Maidstone Hospital using a new epimacular radiotherapy technique to treat a common cause of blindness in elderly people.

The trial is part of a national network of 18 hospitals involved in the research. Up to 40 patients will be treated at Maidstone Hospital over the next three years. Wet age related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the most common causes of sight loss in older people - about a third of people in the 75-85 age group have it.

Nationally, AMD affects 250,000 people. It is a debilitating and aggressive eye condition that can lead to blindness within months if left untreated. Every year 26,000 new cases of wet AMD are diagnosed in the UK.

About 1500 people a year now come for treatment of wet AMD at Maidstone - up from 150 a year a few years ago. The cost of the 7-8 injections needed a year is up to £7,000. By comparison, the new surgical procedure entails a one off cost of about £6,000, and if this reduces the need for such regular injections it could pay for itself within a year or two.

At MTW the trial is carried out under the licence of Dr Stewart Coltart, Consultant Oncologist. Ear, Eye and Mouth Unit staff provide the clinical operating support and Medical Physics provides expert scientific and radiation protection advice.

The team is led by Mr Luke Membrey, Consultant Ophthalmologist. He said: "The outcome of this trial could be really exciting with a major impact on the way these patients are treated. We perform an operation to remove the vitreous jelly from the eye and this then allows us to carry out radiotherapy in the diseased part of the eye and the published results so far have been excellent." "This one-off treatment is delivered through a common day case procedure that can take less than an hour to perform. The hope is that the need for follow-up Lucentis injections into the eye will be less frequent than the current drug-only treatment."

"We hope that the patient's macular degeneration will be permanently halted or at
least slowed down. We will continue to monitor their progress after the treatment.

And as well as benefiting the patients this treatment uses resources much more efficiently than the only other treatment we can offer, which involves a long course of expensive drugs that in many cases only temporarily halts the disease and requires continued follow up in the hospital for many years."

Treated as part of the trial this week was Donald Ross (75) from Paddock Wood. A professional tennis coach who still keeps his hand in part-time, Mr Ross has had numerous injections in his eyes over the past 4 years to stop the progress of macular degeneration. On Tuesday morning he had a 45 minute operation using the radiotherapy technique under local anaesthetic. The procedure was filmed by BBC South East TV.

Speaking the day after the procedure after Luke Membrey had tested his vision, which was good, Mr Ross said: "I volunteered to be part of this trial because I am optimistic that this procedure may mean that I and many other patients will need to have much fewer, and perhaps no further injections to save our sight. That is obviously a major benefit to many people, and it should save the NHS money too.

"The Ophthalmic team at Maidstone Hospital are great. My sight is precious to me, and they have saved it. Dr Membrey is a marvellous surgeon - I call him Cool Hand Luke!"

People interested in participating in the study should visit the study website, www.merlotstudy.com to find out more, and to see if they might be eligible. If eligible, people from Kent should request a referral from their GP or eye doctor to Mr Luke Membrey at MTW. Not all patients who wish to take part in the study will be suitable and some will be randomly allocated to a control group, so that the new treatment can be compared to standard therapy with Lucentis alone.