Medical

Eye-chip could restore vision

In what can be considered as a break-through, Sandia National Laboratories (U.S.A.) has released a prototype eye-chip that may eventually help to restore sight to blind people.

The chip will be inserted onto the retina and linked to nerves that will send electrical impulses to the brain for processing. The module will receive data from a tiny camera lodged in the frame of a pair of glasses. The current technology should produce 1000 points of light (as compared to millions in the biological eye) and will deliver a yellowish image.

Experts closer to glaucoma cure

A team of ophthalmologists at the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom) has become the first in the world to image geodesic structures called Cross-linked Action Networks (Clans), inside the human body. They are formed from the components that maintain the structure of individual cells and are known to change the shape, function and lifecycle of cultured cells.

CSIR scientists develop microchip to detect eye infections

Under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (C.S.I.R.) - led New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative, the scientists have developed a microchip based on diagnostic methods for early intervention for infectious eye diseases and glaucoma. This was announced at the 93rd Indian Science Congress.

Relief Riders to offer free eye surgery camps in Rajasthan villages

Relief Riders International (R.R.I.) is a group of workers that go on horse back to remote villages to implement their mission to provide free medical aid.

According to the W.H.O. there are about 38 million blind people in the world and about 12 million of them live in India. R.R.I. is now poised to bring it’s ‘Give The Gift of Sight’ campaign to rural areas of Rajasthan as the majority of its population suffer from eye related illnesses.

Drug combats vision loss disorder

Injections of the drug ‘Lucentis’ can improve sight in people with a particular form of retina degeneration.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (U.K.) found that the drug slowed vision loss in around nine out of 10 patients. And, one in three had improved vision.

About 95% patients with wet macular degeneration (A.M.D.) maintain their baseline vision whilst on treatment with Lucentis. About one-third patients gain vision and the effect is sustained over the course of Lucentis treatment (1 to 2 years).

Boston implants

In U.S., physicians have successfully operated on infants and children with a new version of an artificial implant that replaces the eye cornea.

This latest development, points to a new option for dramatically improving the vision of a group of people for whom traditional cornea transplants usually fail. It also mirrors similar success in adult patients.

M.O.O.K.P. restores vision

Dr. Gian Carlo Falcinelli’s ‘Modified Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis’ (M.O.O.K.P.) technique has helped hundreds of patients in several countries see the world again in all its colours and light.

Dr. Falcinelli, currently working for San Camillo Hospital in Rome (Italy), has been imparting training in the procedure to ophthalmologists in India, which houses one-third of the estimated 11 million corneal blind population in the world.

Under his guidance, Sankara Nethralaya is establishing an exclusive centre for M.O.O.K.P. procedures to be headed by Dr. G. Sithalakshmi.

Bionic implants

The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise blind eye and allow patients to see," said Professor Mark Humayun, from the University of Southern California.

Pigs raise hopes for blindness cure

Pioneering transplants to restore the sight of people affected by the leading cause of blindness in the Western world could start in three years, after successful human cell implants in pigs.

The animals look a little human, now that they have a lawn of human cells growing in an area about size of about half of a little fingernail at the back of their eyes, which are ideal for testing treatments before they are used on people.

Chandigarh docs find safer cataract-glaucoma treatment

A team of ophthalmologists from Chandigarh has evolveda way to concurrently treat two eye diseases - cataract and glaucoma -without post operative complications. And that's great news for acountry like India, where 80 percent of those above the age of 50 arelikely to have cataract and six percent are likely to have glaucoma.