An electronic eye implant half the thickness of a human hair has helped people with incurable sight loss to see again, opening up a potential 'new era' in tackling blindness. Doctors who implanted the sim card-shaped prosthetic devices say they have helped many of the 38 elderly patients in the trial regain their ability to read letters, numbers and words.
'In the history of artificial vision, this represents a new era,' said Mahi Muqit, a senior consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, one of the 17 sites involved. 'Blind patients are actually able to have meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before. Getting back the ability to read is a major improvement in their quality of life, lifts their mood and helps to restore their confidence and independence.'
The trial found 84% of participants were once again able to read letters, numbers and words after being fitted with the implant, called the Prima device. Eye specialists hailed the results as 'remarkable' and said the device could help people with the 'dry' form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of sight loss in the over-50s.
Moorfields said: 'The revolutionary new implant is the first ever device to enable people to read letters, numbers and words through an eye that had lost its sight.' The 38 patients all had geographic atrophy with dry AMD, which over time progressively deprives someone of their sight and for which there is no treatment.
Sheila Irvine from Wiltshire, one of those who had the chip implanted at Moorfields, said: 'Before receiving the implant it was like having two black discs in my eyes, with the outside distorted. I was an avid bookworm and I wanted that back. ... It's made a big difference. It's a new way of looking through your eyes and it was dead exciting when I began seeing a letter.'
The Prima device, a super-thin microchip just 2mm by 2mm in size, is inserted under the centre of the eye's retina. Patients were given augmented reality glasses connected to a small computer, which processed visual information and converted it into an electrical signal sent to the brain. Muqit stressed that patients required training and intensive rehabilitation to realise the benefits. The results are reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
