Protective Effect of Amblyopia on Age-Related Macular Degeneration

center dot PURPOSE: Our aim was to evaluate whether patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and cooccurrent amblyopia are more likely to have diseases diagnosed on both the ipsilateral and the contralateral side in a large Austrian database.center dot DESIGN: Retrospective cross-sectional study.center dot METHODS: Setting: Institutional practice. Patient Population: Medical records of all patients who visited the Department of Ophthalmology of the Medical University of Graz between December 1996 and June 2021 were searched for the co-occurrence of AMD and amblyopia. Main Outcome Measures: Data from patients with AMD diagnosed on 1 eye side were used for further analysis. Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images were analyzed to confirm the lateral asymmetry of AMD.center dot RESULTS: A total of 327,443 patients were screened for the co-occurrence of AMD and amblyopia. Of them, 8742 patients had AMD diagnosed on 1 eye side and 5051 patients had unilateral amblyopia. In total, 163 patients were found to have AMD diagnosed on 1 side and unilateral amblyopia in combination. Of these, 126 patients had AMD and amblyopia on contralateral sides and 37 had AMD and amblyopia on the ipsilateral side ( P < .001).center dot CONCLUSIONS: Less amblyopic patients had AMD diagnosed on the amblyopic eye compared with the non-amblyopic eye. In cases of lateral asymmetry, the non-amblyopic eye is more likely to have the more advanced form of AMD. (Am J Ophthalmol 2024;259: 1-6.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ))