Functional activities limited by people with age-related macular degeneration
Introduction
Activities of daily living (ADL) refer to self-care tasks. It is classified into basic ADL (BADL) and Instrumental ADL (IADL). The former one is essential for the patients in life such as eating and personal hygiene while the latter one is for the people to function in the community such as shopping.
This may sound easy for a normal human being. However, for a low vision patient, even a very simple task will be a challenge. Low vision refers to impairment of vision which cannot be corrected by surgical or medical means or by standard refractive correction. Low vision patients should have the distance acuity of 6/18 or even poorer to light perception, or with significant visual field loss.
With such a poor visual acuity or visual field, patients with visual impairment may find difficulties in daily activities. This article will show different types of functional activities that will be limited by low vision people and will mainly focus on specific group of low vision patients, exudative age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD). AMD is a degenerative disease that affects the macula, which will have progressive loss of vision to cause the visual impairment.
Exudative AMD (wet type) is less common than the non-exudative (dry) one, but it will lead to progressive vision loss and is one of the leading causes of blindness in the world while dry AMD will also have a chance to progress to wet AMD.
This article will cover both basic activities of daily living (BADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) limited by AMD patients.
Basic activities of daily living
To start with, this article will discuss the basic ADL which will be a...
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To deal with the issue of an aging population, an awareness campaign about the health issues that commonly affect aged people should be run by the government and non-governmental agencies. In addition, awareness should be created among the young to accommodate the elderly; at home as well as at work places...
The book is an exceptional reference for any individual who care for the elderly; it provides insight on how to arran...
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older adults. Journal of Nursing Education, 47(6), 269-271. Retrieved from CINAHL Plus with Full Text database.
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Warren, M. (2008). Memory Loss, Dementia, and Stroke: Implications for Rehabilitation of Older Adults with Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 102(10), 611-615.
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