ABSTRACT
Epidemiological data stress the dramatic increase of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in developed countries. In a country like France (62 million habitants) 80,000 individuals are legally blind as a consequence of this single pathology, and an estimated 1.5 million are classified as low vision patients. Similar figures are reported in North America (Bressler, Bressler, West, Fine, & Taylor, 1989), and it is expected that the numbers will keep growing (Brown & Mellish, 2001; Vingerling, Hofman, Grobbe, & de Jong, 1996).
