Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA: I want to pivot to the impact of this vision loss on health care resource utilization because that’s always a really important consideration as we’re looking at what the total cost of care is. We know there’s vision loss, and we know there are treatments, but we know it impacts other areas of life. Dr Lopes, you’re my go-to expert for these types of questions. What is the impact of vision loss from geographic atrophy [GA] on patient health care resource utilization and cost? Could speak about how vision loss can complicate the management of other diseases?

Maria Lopes, MD, MS: Absolutely, I think both Dr Lally and Dr Khanani have alluded to this. If [the main] risk factor for GA is age, and with age comes comorbidities, it’s kind of a double-edged sword and a circular increase and a problem, because with age comes comorbidities. It’s not uncommon that if you have an 85-year-old, they may be on 10 different medications. If you can’t read the labels, if you can’t take care of yourself, if you’re socially isolated, if you can’t drive to see your doctor…. There’s also a pretty significant caregiver burden. The caregiver may be of a similar age. Or if the caregiver has GA and is taking care of somebody, and they can’t see labels, what happens to the care and the associated costs of these patients? To an extent they [may] have cardiometabolic disease, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, respiratory, I heard COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and smoking. This only compounds the problem of taking care of oneself, or a caregiver taking care of a loved one if he or she has GA.

The consequence of this is you end up in the hospital. I don’t think the data are very forthcoming, but it’s a great opportunity I think to look at medical errors. Dr Khanani and Dr Lally mentioned safety issues, fractures. But also, it you’re noncompliant, you can’t read labels, you’re not taking your medications appropriately, the risk is even higher that you’re going to end up in the ED [emergency department] or the hospital compounded by other safety issues.

Transcript edited for clarity.