Resources & Links

Retinal Disorders

Your retina is the light-sensing layer at the back of your eye. Like the film in a camera, it picks up images which are transmitted to your brain via your optic nerve.

Your brain does the real work of seeing, making sense of all those images.  Any damage or deterioration in your eye or optic nerve that reduces the quality of the images your brain gets can affect your ability to see.

Diagram of an eye. Retina with parts labelled.

In some retinal disorders there is a gradual deterioration of the whole retina, while other conditions affect only part of the retina.

The type and severity of the symptoms vary according to the disorder. Common symptoms are loss of night vision and side vision in retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and loss of straight ahead (central) vision in macular degeneration (MD).

The macula enables us to see detail, so any damage to it affects our ability to read or do anything that requires precise vision, such as driving.

Find Out More

In the 1980s when Retina NZ began, it was very difficult for people with retinal conditions to find information that they could work through at their own pace or show family and friends.  Nowadays there is so much on the Internet the question is, Where to start?

Here are some suggestions. We’ve included:

  • Selected New Zealand websites with quick summaries of some of the information provided, plus some other local sources of advice and assistance.
  • Selected international websites, also with quick summaries.  International sites can be a rich source of information on vision and related health and lifestyle issues, and are particularly useful if you are looking for the rarer retinal disorders or are interested in research and clinical trials.

Accessibility Tip: The selected websites that are specifically for people with eye conditions have in-built Accessibility options. Or, for both these and other sites, anyone using Internet Explorer 7 or above or Mozilla Firefox can enlarge the font and illustration size by using the "CTRL +" keystroke. You may need to press this combination several times to reach the desired size. To return to a smaller size press "CTRL -". You may need to do this several times.

Click here for New Zealand Sites and Sources

Click here for International Sites

If you can’t find what you’re looking for on these sites or through your own Internet searches for specific topics, we may be able to help.

Click here for our peer support contact details.

Retinal photographs on this website are courtesy of the New Zealand Association of Optometrists. Other photographs in our page headers are courtesy of the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health.