Ahluwalia A, Shen LL, Chen EM, et al. - Researchers intended to determine if there is an association between geographic atrophy (GA) disease characteristics and mortality risk. To identify total area of atrophy, GA effective radius growth rate, disease laterality, and the presence of foveal center involvement, they manually delineated color fundus photographs of 209 Age-Related Eye Disease Study participants with GA secondary to age-related macular degeneration. Forty-eight (23.0%) participants with GA died during a median follow-up of 6.8 years. A greater total area of atrophy, indicating more extensive GA, was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in the cohort. The extent of GA may reflect the extent of underlying disease processes that contribute to increased mortality risk, implying that GA is part of a systemic disease process rather than a purely ocular disease process.