PRISM March-April 2013

OPTICAL IMPLANTS
Eye-opener
Retinitis pigmentosa is a rare genetic eye disease that strikes around 100,000 Americans.
Sufferers initially lose their peripheral vision and eventually go blind. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration recently approved the worlds first retinal implant that allows sufferers to regain
some vision. The disease destroys the retinas photoreceptors, the cells that convert light into
electrochemical impulses that travel up the optic nerve to the brain, where they are decoded into
images. Second Sight Medical Products Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System implants 60
electrodes into the retina and uses special glasses affixed with a tiny camera to send them
images. Of the 60 patients treated so far, all have had varying degrees of vision restored, though
mainly just an ability to detect dark and light. A few, though, were able to read newspaper
headlines. The Argus II system already has been approved in Europe, where it costs around
$100,000, with surgery an additional $16,000. The company expects it will cost more in the
United States. Meanwhile, at MIT, electrical engineering professor John Wyatt is working on an
implant system that would use 400 electrodes. And at Stanford, Daniel Palanker, an associate
professor of ophthalmology, has been experimenting with a system that would implant 5,000
photovoltaic cells to help those blinded by macular degeneration, a condition that typically
strikes the elderly. TG