Nova Eye Medical (EYE) Discussion, page-749

All good. My initial concern was that patients would rather wait to see if they got late stage before trying treatment, thus making wet AMD injections a competitor (keep in mind wet AMD begins as dry AMD). This is due to the fact that not everyone actually progresses to late-stage disease, and the symptoms of early-intermediate are often not super severe, thereby not really necessitating intervention.

However, I now don't actually believe this will be an issue for several reason. First, 2RT in itself is not very inconvenient, especially compared to monthly injections. I think people will be driven out of a fear of regular needles to try 2RT first. More importantly though, waiting for late stage to use anti-VEGF is quite risky. Symptoms are very slow to take effect in earlier stages of the disease, thereby providing warning to patients. However, as soon as late-stage kicks in progression accelerates extremely quick, so fast in fact that vision loss can occur in days rather than months and years. This is so fast that often the damage can be done before patients even have the time to book an appointment. There is also the fact that injections only temporarily freeze progression, and that one missed appointment will also lead to permanent damage. Imo, I think that patients would rather avoid having any risk of these symptoms by attacking the disease early. For doctors, whilst anti-VEGF injections are very profitable, lasers are very profitable as well (hence why there are so many high-end laser clinics out there). 2RT will enable them to treat far more patients, meaning they will likely be keen to recommend this laser early on. Late-stage progression is unpredictable, and especially in first world countries I think the risk of permanent blindness is too big a risk for patients to wait and see if things get worse before attempting to intervene. For me personally, if I was aware that I had AMD I would do whatever I could to stop it as early as possible, there is no way I would be comfortable waiting for late stage before intervening, especially if there was a very comfortable and easy laser procedure available.