An eye implant enabled an American with retinity pigment to partially regain sight.
It is a miracle of medicine. Larry Hester, a 66-year-old American who has been blind half his life, was able to see again thanks to an eye implant. This man lost his sight due to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa which gradually destroyed all the photoreceptors in his eye. “It was a pretty overwhelming shock, really. I was 33 at the time, ”said Larry Hester.
Today, he is the first man to test the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis system at Duke University in the United States. This system is quite complex: first Larry Hester had to have 60 electrodes grafted onto the retina of his left eye. Then he wore specific glasses with a camera, while a computer system transformed the images into signals. Electrodes translated these signals into electrical stimuli understandable by the patient’s optic nerve.
This is how Larry Hester was able to see again. Of course his vision is very different from ours. “Patients are stimulated by flashes of light when they perceive something bright and when the camera picks up something that is darker, they receive fewer flashes,” says Dr Paul Hahn, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Duke University Eye Center. This artificial eye therefore allows the patient to see changes in light.
As MaxiSciences magazine points out, if the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis system is still quite limited, it is nevertheless a real step forward towards the possibility of restoring sight in people with certain forms of blindness. “It’s a pretty limited way, but it’s a fantastic step forward,” commented Dr. Colin McCannel, an expert at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California.
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