Life-changing eye implant helps blind patients read again

A group of blind patients can now read again after being fitted with a life-changing implant at the back of the eye.

A surgeon who inserted the microchips in five patients at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London says the results of the international trial are “astounding”.

Sheila Irvine, 70, who is registered blind, told the BBC it was “out of this world” to be able to read and do crosswords again. “It’s beautiful, wonderful. It gives me such pleasure.”

The technology offers hope to people with an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), called geographic atrophy (GA), which affects more than 250,000 people in the UK and five million worldwide.

In those with the condition – which is more common in older people – cells in a tiny area of the retina at the back of the eye gradually become damaged and die, resulting in blurred or distorted central vision. Colour and fine detail are often lost.

The new procedure involves inserting a tiny 2mm-square photovoltaic microchip, with the thickness of a human hair, under the retina.

Patients then put on glasses with a built-in video camera. The camera sends an infrared beam of video images to the implant at the back of the eye, which sends them on to a small pocket processor to be enhanced and made clearer.

The images are then sent back to the patient’s brain, via the implant and optic nerve, giving them some vision again.

The patients spent months learning how to interpret the images.

Mahi Muqit, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, who led the UK arm of the trial, told the BBC it was “pioneering and life-changing technology”.

“This is the first implant that’s been demonstrated to give patients meaningful vision that they can use in their daily life, such as reading, writing.

“I think this is a major advance,” he said.

For the research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 38 patients with geographic atrophy in five European countries took part in the trial of the Prima implant, which is made by California biotech Science Corporation.

Of 32 patients given the implant, 27 were able to read again using their central vision. After a year, this equated to an improvement of 25 letters, or five lines, on an eye chart.

For Sheila, from Wiltshire, the improvement is even more dramatic. Without the implant, she is completely unable to read.

But when we filmed Sheila reading an eye chart at Moorfields Hospital, she did not make a single error. After completing it, she punched the air and cheered.