Jan 17 2005
A new surgical procedure that has improved eyesight in people who have
severe nearsightedness and face a dearth of treatments has made its way to
western New York.
Ophthalmologist Scott MacRae, M.D.,director of the Strong Vision Refractive
Surgery Center at the University of Rochester Eye Institute, this week treated a
patient’s severe nearsightedness – vision of approximately 20/3,400 compared to
a healthy 20/20 – by outfitting her with a permanently implanted lens, a
procedure that was approved two months ago by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration.
The surgery gives an option besides life-long thick glasses or contact lenses
to patients legally blind, whose vision problems go far beyond simply not seeing
the large “E” on a standard eye chart.
“This surgery produces one of the most dramatic improvements in quality of
life that I have seen in my 20 years as a corneal surgeon,” says MacRae. “These
are patients who really are blind without glasses. If they knock their glasses
off the nightstand, they’re blind – for many, their greatest fear is to be
caught in a situation like a fire in a hotel where they could lose their glasses
and not be able to find their way out.”
Most such patients aren’t eligible for procedures like LASIK because their
eyes simply are too bad to benefit from the procedure, and so they’ve been left
behind as their friends and colleagues have ditched their glasses and contacts
in recent years.
The key to the new procedure is a plastic lens that is implanted into a
person’s eye permanently to correct for the person’s abnormal vision. The
technology was included in Time Magazine’s list of top medical developments in
2004.
The lens is implanted just behind the cornea and in front of the iris and the
eye’s natural lens during an outpatient procedure that lasts about an hour. It’s
the first time the FDA has approved a permanently implanted lens to correct
nearsightedness. In studies of the device, 84 percent of patients with vision
20/400 or worse improved to at least 20/40.
MacRae, a professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, helped guide the new
technology through its final phases in the United States, working closely with
California-based American Medical Optics until the device’s approval by the FDA
in October 2004. AMO distributes the device, which is called the Verisyse Phakic
Intraocular lens and is made in the Netherlands. The lens has been used in
Europe since 1990, and so far more than 100,000 people worldwide have had the
procedure.
“These are usually people who have worn glasses – super-thick glasses – or
contact lenses their whole lives,” says MacRae, “and they get a great deal of
distortion or glare from their glasses. We’re glad we can finally offer them an
alternative. Back in medical school, we never dreamed that improving vision so
dramatically would even be possible.”
Huawei smartwatch nearly matches gold-standard sleep test