Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A new bionic eye implant has made it possible for a 68-year-old Minnesota native suffering from a degenerative eye condition to see his wife for the first time in more than a decade.
Go ahead, try to keep a dry eye.
Retinitis pigmentosa
According to Mashable, Allen Zderad was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa nearly 20 years ago, and since then he had lost nearly all of his eyesight to the disease, which causes damage to the tissue at the back of the inner eye that converts light images to nerve signals.
There is no cure or effective treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, but thanks to a clinical trial of a new device built by Second Sight, Zderad has regained the ability to see shapes, make out human forms and even see his own reflection in a window, the website added in its report.
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“It’s crude, but it’s significant. It works,” he said after seeing his wife for the first time following the implant, which the Mayo Clinic described as a “tiny wafer-like chip” that was embedded in his right eye and “sends light wave signals to the optic nerve, bypassing the damaged retina.”
Wires required for the bionic eye’s operation were implanted in January, and two weeks later, the rest of the prosthetic device was surgically implanted. Though the device works, it still needs to be adjusted, and Zderad will have to undergo several hours of instruction and physical therapy in order to make full use of the instrument, according to the man’s doctors.
Greatly improves quality of life
Zderad is the first man in Minnesota and just the 15th person in America to receive the device, but there are limitations to what he will be able to do with it. While he will be able to navigate a room full of people without needing to use a cane, he will not be able to make out detail in faces or images. Even so, the clinic said it will “greatly improves his quality of life.”
“The retinal prosthesis implant has taken over 25 years to develop. Hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of people to bring this forward to this point,” Dr. Raymond Iezzi, a retinal surgeon and clinical ophthalmologist at the Mayo Clinic, told KARE News in Minnesota.
It really is a bionic eye
The device, officially known as the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January 2014 and reportedly cost between $300 million and $500 million to develop. Second Sight explains that it provides electrical stimulation of the retina to induce visual perception in patients with severe to profound retinitis pigmentosa.
“It’s a bionic eye – in every sense of the word. It’s not a replacement for the eyeball, but it works with interacting with the eye,” Dr. Iezzi said. “Mankind has been seeking to cure blindness for 2,000 years or more, but only in the past quarter of a century have we had the electronics… all the other things come together to build a retinal prosthesis that could restore sight to the blind.”
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The device was first implanted in a pair of patients at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center in January 2014, and earlier clinical studies indicated that most recipients of the Argus II were able to perform basic activities better with the prosthesis than without it. Many were able to follow lines in a cross walk, while some could even sort laundry or read very large letters.
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