January 24, 2011 
U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), after five years of research of the activity on the control group of volunteers, has finally approved an optical telescope eye implant, invention of the company VisionCare, that will be used for people who have completely lost sight due to the aged macular degeneration…
The disease starts in the central area of the retina, when the center of the picture loses its sharpness, while peripheral vision remains relatively intact.
Age-related macular degeneration
Age-related degeneration of the eye affects approximately 10 percent of the population from 66-74 years and 30 percent of the population from 74-85 years. The telescopic implant – which is now manufactured by the company VisionCare under the brand Center Sight – is an optical instrument that is built into the eye and returns sight in a way that the image is projected onto a healthy part of the retina. It was developed by Dr. Kathryn Colby from the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Clinic.
The implanted telescope is actually a Galileo’s lens system with a diameter of 3.6 millimeters, 4.4 millimeters long. The result of clinical trials that Kathryn Colby conducted on 206 patients who were almost completely blind is that in 67 percent of them the sight mostly returned.
The operation of implantation in the modern ophthalmic surgical conditions takes about 35 minutes, followed by therapy and rehabilitation for a period of three months.
The original work of the author can be found in the journal Archives of Ophthalmology from the year 2007.
Taken from: www.dalje.com