May 26, 2009 -- Usually, a telescope ends up inside someone's eye after a tragic accident. A new telescope, surgically implanted into a patient's eye, helps alleviate a tragic accident.
Used to treat advanced macular degeneration, the implantable telescope can magnify images three times to restore partial vision to those who have lost nearly all their sight.
"The implantable telescope is like Galileo's original telescope," said Allen Hill, CEO of VisionCare Inc., the company making the implantable telescope. "It works with the cornea as a fixed telephoto lens, projecting images onto a wider area of the retina to allow the individual to recognize and respond to what they see in detail."
The implantable telescope is used to treat macular degeneration, a form of progressive blindness that can develop in a few months or take decades to fully manifest itself. There is no known cause for the disease, which can occur in wet and dry forms. Drugs can slow or even stop the disease, but there is no treatment to remove the scar tissue that develops inside the eye.
More than one million people in the United States have some stage of macular degeneration, and only a small percentage of that number has advanced macular degeneration.
Related Content:
Patients with advanced macular degeneration lose the ability to focus on details but keep their peripheral vision. The implantable telescope takes advantage of that fact.
Smaller than a pencil eraser, the glass implantable telescope is placed into one pupil only, ideally the eye with the best vision, during a one-hour, outpatient procedure using local anesthesia. Once nestled inside the eye, the telescope magnifies incoming images up to three times their normal size, making it easier for patients to see specific details.
Since only one eye is equipped with the implantable telescope, two different images are sent to the brain. Sorting out the two signals can take some getting used to, said Hill.
"It's like you are listening to the news and your wife is trying to tell you something; you just tune one out," said Hill.
If you can't tune one image out, there are other ways for your brain to deal with two separate images, says Eli Peli, a scientist at the Schepens Eye Research Institute. For patients who can't switch images by will alone, winking can work. Others put a slice of tape over part of their glasses to help their brain choose which image to focus on. But eventually the brain chooses one image over the other. "There is no persistent double vision," said Peli.
The device is also only for patients with advanced macular degeneration. If a person just wants to have a cool bionic eye, good luck trying to find a surgeon to perform this operation, says Peli.
During the last trial, which ended months ago, 206 people had the telescope implanted. Six eventually had it removed, some because they didn't like it, others because of a manufacturing defect that has since been corrected, said Peli. Other trials in England currently has 10 spots out of an estimated 50 filled.
The trial will last several months, after which Hill expects that the FDA will formally approve the device for use in the United States. (The implantable telescope has already been approved for use in Europe for about five years now.)
Once the telescope is implanted it generally takes one to two weeks for the eye to recover. Patients then have to undergo training on how to use the device properly. Three months later though, "patients are watching TV, exercising, tracking and tracing items, even reading," said Hill.
Related Links:
our sites
video
mobile
shop
stay connected
corporate
