While more advanced stages of dry macular degeneration can still be asymptomatic, this tends not to be the case. Patients often complain of blurring or distortion, which can affect their daily activities. Because many of these patients also have cataracts, the symptoms may be mistaken for those due solely to the cataract.
Ocular examination with the patient’s eye care provider often differentiates between the two conditions. As the dry macular degeneration continues to progress, mild distortion may turn into significant difficulty with reading or distance vision, and areas may even darken or blur out entirely. In addition, patients often require and become dependent on better or brighter lighting to perform their daily activities.