Geographic atrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium: diagnosis and vision rehabilitation.

Senile macular disease has been found to be a common cause of legal blindness and visual impairment. The spectrum of clinical manifestations can present many variations of exudative and non-exudative disease. Three cases of one manifestation, geographic atrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium, are described with emphasis on differential diagnosis from a clinically similar disease, central areolar choroidal dystrophy. It has been reported that patients with central areolar choroidal dystrophy do not respond well to magnification. We found that patients with geographic atrophy of the retinal pigment respond well to magnification and vision rehabilitation.