Slashdot Mirror

TFA expressed shock that someone might have their natural lens removed. This is a routine operation, usually done because of cataracts.

My wife has had this done. She developed cataracts at a relatively young age, and they got bad enough that the insurance company signed off on the cataract surgery.

Noteworthy in my wife's case: we paid the extra money to get a vision-correcting lens in each eye. The usual replacement lens is a neutral lens, but her eyes are now correcting her vision from the inside. Before she had this procedure, she needed glasses all the time for everything. (Or contact lenses of course.) After the procedure, she only needs glasses for reading; they had to pick a distance for the correction to work at, and the default is to leave you able to walk around and drive and such without glasses, but need glasses to read. (Makes sense to me!)

She now has the best vision she has ever had in her life. She grumbles about needing reading glasses but I remind her she used to need glasses all the time for everything; this is a win.

I am seriously considering having this done myself as an elective procedure. I have some presbyopia and I now need glasses to read fine print. There are artificial lenses available that are flexible and restore the ability to focus on near things; these are called accommodating intra-ocular lenses (IOLs). It would be nice to get my close-up vision back. In the USA the available accommodating IOL is called the Crystalens.

I have been calling my wife a "cyborg" as she now has technological lenses rather than natural ones.

Returning to the news story: TFA is absolutely terrible, just awful. It fails to answer the most basic question: what is the purpose of this invention? The link given in TFS shows what seems to be a one-page PDF, but if you use the crude-looking navigation controls on the left you can browse forward and backward through the patent.

http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?docid=20160113760

Pub. No.: US 2016/0113760 A1
Pub. Date: Apr. 28, 2016
Filed: Oct. 24, 2014

Here's the abstract. The PDF appears to be all image, no selectable text, so I just typed all this in.

An intra-ocular device includes an electronic lens that can be controlled to control the overall optical power of the device. The device can be installed within a flexible polymeric material shaped to conform to the inside surface of a lens capsule of an eye. Accommodation forces applied to the device and/or polymeric material via the lens capsule can cause a change in the optical power of the device and/or polymeric material. Further, such accommodation forces can be detected by an accommodation sensor of the device and the optical power of the electronic lens can be controlled based on the detected accommodation forces. Operated in this way, the device and polymeric material can restore a degree of accommodation to the eye that is related to existing mechanisms for controlling such accommodation, i.e., forces exerted by the eye via the lens capsule.

If I'm understanding that correctly, this is a very complicated way to get a lens that adjusts its focus in response to the normal movements of muscles in the eye to adjust focus.

I don't know why someone would want this rather than a purely passive device like a CrystalLens. I guess this would be more fine-tunable, so might provide the ultimate in vision focus; but it's tremendously more complex and would seem to require an external power supply, rather than being a simple piece of flexible clear material (of just the right shape and implanted in just the right place).

Speculation: this m

There might be some additional benefits: Superhero vision http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/

I can vouch for that as an eyewitness. I was severely nearsighted all my life with 20/400 vision. Then I got older and was farsighted as well, then I got an eye infection and the treatment gave me a cataract. My vision is now 20/16 at distance and 20/12 at close up; way better than the normal 20/20. No glasses, no contacts, not even reading glasses... and I'm 60!

You would have been better linking CrystaLens itself rather than your surgeon's site.

Not everyone gets that good of results, however. The literature from CrystaLens itself says 98% of patients wind up with 20/25 or better. 20/25 isn't bad, but nowhere near super vision. I got lucky and had an excellent surgeon. My ex-wife wasn't so lucky, she had the surgery at a different place and now wears bifocals.

But the implant TFS is talking about is far from super vision; at 525 pixels you would still be legally blind, which is better than completely blind.

I'm pretty sure you only need that with implanted tissues, not implanted devices. I have a CrystaLens in my left eye, and I need no antirejection drugs. I know people with other artificial parts and they need no drugs, either. The only person I know taking those drugs has a donated liver and two donated corneas.

By the way, you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I had a cataract caused by steroid eyedrops. You most likely had the older monofocal implants. Mine was implanted in 2006, three years after the FDA approved the CrystaLens. I also was extremely lucky. Most people have 20/20 to 20/25 vision after a CrystaLens implant, the eye I got it in is now 20/16. The other eye is still 20/400, but then again I can see things REAL close with that eye.

My beard was sparse at age 24, too (My youngest daughter is your age).

FOUR retinal detachments? Jesus H. Christ! I had a detachment a couple of years after the implant, and that vitrectomy was hell. FOUR? Wow, man, you've been through some damned shitty times. I hope you didn't have to get a scleral buckle, that would even be worse (Thank God I never had to have oneof those)! I got lucky with the vitrectomy as well; the surgeon said "if I had a retinal detachment, I'd want it right where yours is." The vision after the vitrectomy was actually better than before the detachment, because I don't have any "floaters" in that eye now.

And actually, even though I am pretty old, I don't feel old. Yet. My dad says I'm old, my daughter says "you're not old. Next year you'll be old!"

CrystaLens; ask your eye doctor about it. Its primary use is for cataracts, but my surgeon said they'll implant them for other problems (myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism). If you have cataracts, insurance will pay for most of the cost, but insurance won't cover it for other corrections.

I journaled about the experience here.

If you're severely nearsighted, laser surgery can't bring you up to 20/20 anyway; there just isn't enough cornea to remove.

There were previous articles about physical implants into the body that run on body heat. The idea isn't so new, this is just less invasive

I would think that would only be used to power devices that needed to be implanted; pacemakers, etc. It would actually be less invasive, because you wouldn't require periodic surgery to replace the power supply, and you wouldn't have to have wires hanging out of your body.

The device implanted in my left eye* is powered by the eye's focusing muscles. It seems that a pacemaker that was powered by your heartbeat, like my implant is powered by focusing muscles, would be more practical.

* CrystaLens IOL

What I *really* need is a new pair of eyeballs.

Not your eyeballs, just their lenses. They have soft contacts for astigmatism now, but if you have the money for it a CrystaLens is the way to go; I have one in my left eye and it's fantastic.

Its amazing how science has in some cases passed science fiction. In Star Trek IV there's a fictional drug called "retinox" that cures age related presbyopia by (presumably) softening the lens, and since Kirk is allergic to retinox, he has to wear reading glasses. One would think that McCoy could just transport Kirk's crystaline lens out and transport a CrystaLens into it, but the si-fi writers didn't forsee this new tech (it was FDA approved in 2003).

No, he's not a vampire, he's a Cyborg. For that matter so am I. Neither garlic nor stakes will suffice. In fact, a steak through the heart is the likely cause of Cheney's becoming a cyborg in the first place!

You will be assimilated. Resistance is not only futile, when the time comes you will beg to join us.

Disclaimer: By "us" I mean cyborg, not Republican. I didn't vote for that particular cyborg and never would; I consider him and Bush to be traitors to my country. See what happens when you elect an alcoholic to the Presidency and Vice Presidency?

-mcgrew
PS- did I tell you that you would be assimilated? In fact you may already be a winner!

I thought they were glass, perhaps not. You're actually older than me and it was about 1970 when I tried contacts. So if yours were plastic in 1959 mine certainly were as well.

You say your vision was 20/400. Is that primarily myopia?

Yes.

If so, what's your refractive correction?

I have no idea, but the lens I wear in my right eye is a 6.

As for cataract surgery: had one done when I was 60, which got me to a trivial -0.75 diopter correction

Mine corrected my vision to 20/16 at distance and 20/12 closeup, but I got the new tech that can focus. A little arithmetic says you're 6 years older than me, so you got yours done about the same time I did.

(waiting for the other one to get bad enough so that insurance will cover it).

Me too. Right now I'm waiting for the blood in my good eye (the one with the IOL) to clear up, my retina bled a few weeks ago where it tore the year before last. Dr. Odin says if it keeps doing that he'll have to perform a vitrectomy.

This was the closest thing to no surgery I can imagine (less than ten minutes in the operating room). I'll take that over a root canal any day.

Root canals are a whole lot easier than they were in the early seventies, but I'd still take cataract surgery over it. Except fo rthe eyedrops it was entirely painless.

I was 12 (IIRC) when the original series with Scotty came out. In the middle 1960s, the "communicators" were fantasy. Now we have cell phones. Doors that magically open were likewise impossible, but now they're at every grocery store. As were the voice activated computers with flat screens. As were a host of other impossible things on that show we now take for granted.

In at least one respect, something that was "impossible" in the twenty fourth century is now commonplace. In one of the movies, McCoy gives Kirk a pair of reading glasses because he's allergic to whatever drug geezers used to soften the eye's focusing lens. Curing it was impossible in the Star Trek future, but in 2003 the FDA approved a device called a CrystaLens, an eye implant that cures cataracts, nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism! I had one implanted in my left eye. After wearing glasses all my life, then in middle age wearing both contact lenses for my nearsightedness and reading glasses for my age-related farsightedness, I no longer need any corrective lenses at all, although I still wear a contact in my right eye. I'm looking forward to getting a cataract in that eye so insurance will pay most of the cost of getting my eye fixed. What Dr. McCoy couldn't do for Kirk, my eye surgeon, Dr. Yea, did for me!

As to all the science being magic and/or bullshit, you might want to read an artticle on NASA's web site titled The Science of Star Trek.

-mcgrew

Geordi's visor to allow blind people to see

We've actually gone past Star Trek in some respects! In Star Trek IV (I think it was IV, it was one of the movies) McCoy gives Kirk a pair of reading glasses, since Kirk's allergic to whatever drug they have that cures age related hyperopia (farsightedness).

Reading glasses? How quaint! I was very nearsighted (myopia) all my life until I reached my forties, and was both nearsighted and farsighted, needing both contact lenses and those quaint reading glasses McCoy gave Kirk. Yeah, most geezers just get bifocals... Then I got a cataract in my left eye from steroid eye drops an eye doctor prescribed. They did surgery, sticking a needle in my eye, turning my lens (cataract) to mush, sucked it out, and replaced it with a CryataLens IOL.

I no longer need glasses or contact lenses. At all. I can get up, get and the car and drive. I can read. My vision is BETTER THAN 20/20 at all distances! ...and if McCoy would have seen the operating room they did the surgery in, he'd have been jealous.

Do you really think they don't have plastic surgery in the 24th Century?

Well, since McCoy had to give Kirk a pair of reading glasses they obviously won't have multifocal IODs, so what makes you so sure they'll still have plastic surgery?

My eyes, however, have hit the 40-year marker and I do have to use reading glasses. The doc said I used them too much by learning to read when I was two.

Get a different eye doctor, yours is a quack. Everyone needs reading glasses if they live long enough. It's usually between 40 and 50, and your reading had nothing to do with it. In middle age the eye's focusing lens (behind the iris) gradually hardens, so you can't focus any more.

This can be fixed. However, at $7500 per eye it's pretty expensive, but if you can develop cataracts then insurance will cover all but a couple grand per eye. It's called a CrystaLens; they stick a needle in your eye, suck out the lens, and replace it with the implant. It's brand new, only FDA approved in 2003.

I had my left eye done last month, and it's amazing. I'm 54 and was using contact lenses for my lifelong 20-400 nearsightedness AND reading glasses for my age related farsightedness. My left eye is now 20-16 (that's better than 20-20) and in good light I can read the date on a dime, without glasses! I've never been able to see this good before, even with corrective lenses.

My other eye's lens hasn't become opaque enough for insurance to help yet, the doctor says a year or two. So, I have time to save up another two grand for the other eye, and still use a contact lens in that one.

Oh yeah, you can give yourself cataracts with steroid eye drops like prednisolone.