Sarah Rogers
Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist in British Columbia has spent the last eight years and about $3 million in developing the Ocumetics Bionic Lens. This lens will give patients better than perfect vision – 60/20, three times better than 20/20 – and allow them to see objects crystal-clearly even from a distance of 30 feet.
Perfect eyesight would result “no matter how crummy your eyes are,” Webb says, adding the Bionic Lens would be an option for someone who depends on corrective lenses and is over about age 25, when the eye structures are fully developed.
“This is vision enhancement that the world has never seen before,” he says, showing a Bionic Lens, which looks like a tiny button.
“If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the Bionic Lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away,” says Webb, demonstrating how a custom-made lens that folded like a taco in a saline-filled syringe would be placed in an eye, where it would unravel itself within 10 seconds.
Dr. Webb claims that his surgically implanted lenses can prevent the formation of cataracts by replacing rotted human lens.
Dr. Vincent DeLuise, an ophthalmologist who teaches at Yale University and at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, says, “There’s a lot of excitement about the Bionic Lens from very experienced surgeons who perhaps had some cynicism about this because they’ve seen things not work in the past. They think that this might actually work and they’re eager enough that they all wish to be on the medical advisory board to help him on his journey. I think this device is going to bring us closer to the holy grail of excellent vision at all ranges — distant, intermediate and near.”
The custom-made lens, folded like a taco in a saline-filled syringe, would be injected in an eye, where it would unravel itself within 10 seconds. The surgical procedure takes about eight minutes following which a patient’s sight would be perfectly corrected. Post clinical trials, the Bionic lens will be available in Canada and other countries in the next two years.
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