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Stacy: "I don't know I just like the idea of the convenience of not having to have
glasses."
Imagine reading in bed without wearing your glasses it's a procedure
that may interest anyone with aging eyes.
Many of you know the feeling you need a hold things just at arms went just to see
them.
Well it's a common problem as we all grow older and lasik can't fix it,
but now there is a new surgical fix in clinical trials that could change how we
see,
our Tim Sherno explains how it works.
"Wait till your my age!"
Stacy Lundberg was losing focus. Stacey: "Yeah
I could probably hold it farther but my arm doesn't go any farther." Dr Chu: "The medical
term of what Stacy has is presbyopia, which is the
natural aging process of the eye where we lose the ability to focus on close things.
Stacy: "Ahh they're really bad, they have finger prints"
Like millions of others Stacy turned to reading glasses. They're black they go with everything.
The surgical options for treating presbyopia really limited.
Doctor Ralph Chu from the Chu Vision Institute in Bloomington
is one of a select handful of doctors in the country conducting a
clinical trial for the FDA, testing a procedure called a
raindrop near vision inlay, it could mean the end of
reading glasses which sounds good to Stacy Lundberg.
Stacy: "I just like the idea of
the convenience of not having to have glasses"
There are two steps to the procedure: step one a laser
lasik cut across Stacey's cornea.
Dr Chu: "You did great! We will back out from here, I will see you in a few minutes."
Next step is the biggy
We just made a LASIK flap, we're going to put a little implantable contact lens
under the LASIK flap to help
give Stacy the ability to read without glasses.
With the lens in place Dr Chu recovers it with the cornea and that's it
for the surgery. Dr Chu: "Surgery went great, it was painless,
and I think she will get good results."
Their is follow-up care but.
Dr Chu: "What's amazing is how fast the vision comes back"
Just a few minutes have passed since Stacy's corneas cut and folded back from her eye
Dr Chu: "Can you read anything up here?"
Stacey: "Yeah um... our family went to the restaurant time for dinner" Dr Chu: "Thats 20/20"
Wow right, that is good news, but there is also some not-so-good news. Dr Chu: "We are still
a few years out from having this available to the general public." But when it is. Dr Chu: There is
over ninety million patients in the world that have trouble
with the reading glasses
so having a technology like this I think will be an exciting thing for
those patients and for us." " It went great for her!"
The procedure is in the third phase of the FDA approval process, it's already
being done in Europe so the odds are very glood that it will pass.
Dr Chu says there's no way of knowing what it will cost but expects
that you would probably cost at the same as LASIK surgery.