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Researchers
in Illinois have implanted microchips in the eyes of three
blind men in a trial that someday may provide help for the
10 million Americans who suffer from macular degeneration
and retinitis pigmentosa.
Alan Chow,
the pediatric ophthalmologist who helped invent the chip,
said an evaluation of whether the microchips have helped the
three men will be done in two or three months. One had the
surgery at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke Medical Center in Chicago,
and two at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Ill.
The men,
a 72-year-old and 59-year-old twins, show no sign of rejection
of the microchip, doctors said.
Surgeons
cut through the white of the eye to insert the silicon chip,
the size of a pinhead, under the retina in the back of the
eye. Chow said the self-contained microchip, which converts
light into electrical signals that could produce a visual
image in the brain, gets its power from the light that enters
the eye.
Chips
planted in three other patients a year ago are sending electrical
signals to their brains, and Chow said results of that trial
will be reported to the Food and Drug Administration later
this year.
"We
don't expect to give someone 20/20 vision," he said.
But he said the blind may get enough vision to recognize faces
or get around in an unfamiliar house.
Source:
Medical Week staff,
week of August 5, 2001
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