How to fight blindness, bionic eye provides a "universal" solution
Release date: 2016-12-16
Second Sight's Argus® II currently has 200 success stories in the United States. Unfortunately, the Argus II of Second Sight is still very expensive, and the cost of equipment and implant surgery is as high as $143,000, which is affordable for anyone, and has only been approved in some regions, such as the United States and Europe.
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, approximately 285 million people worldwide suffer from visual impairment, while 90% of visually impaired patients are low-income people, and 82% of patients who lose vision are over 50 years old. In order to treat visual impairment, related treatment methods and technological innovations have been developed for many years, 80% of visual disorders have been effective prevention and treatment, but there are still diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration that make doctors unable to do anything.
Fortunately, in addition to traditional medical methods, we seem to have found a versatile solution: bionic eyes.
The bionic eye, also known as the retinal prosthesis system, is designed to convert light that enters our eye into electrical signals that bypass the necrotic tissue and transmit it directly to our optic nerve. The optic nerve transmits the electronic signal from the bionic eye device to the brain, and the brain parses the signal to image. This is the process we use the bionic eye to "see".
So far, only one Argus II bionic eye called Second Sight has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Argus II is primarily used to help blind people with retinitis pigmentosa to see the light again. Retinitis pigmentosa is a chronic, progressive, hereditary, dystrophic retinal degeneration, mainly characterized by chronic progressive visual field loss, night blindness, pigmented retinopathy, and electroretinogram abnormalities.
In patients with retinitis pigmentosa, the photoreceptor cells of their retina gradually become necrotic with age, eventually losing part of their vision or even complete blindness. For the patient, it is like looking at the world with a tube, the tube is gradually narrowing until it is completely invisible. For those who have a normal vision before, the feeling of losing sight but being powerless is really an abnormal torture.
It is very unfortunate that there is currently no effective treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, and the Argus II biomimetic eye offers another possibility to skip the part of retinal necrosis.
The Argus? II Retinal Prosthesis System has three modules, a wearable computer, a pair of camera glasses, and a retinal implant. First, the retinal implant is surgically implanted into the patient's eye and placed on the retina. The camera glasses transmit the captured images to a small computer that the user carries with them, which are then parsed by the computer and then transcoded into signals that the brain can understand and then wirelessly transmitted to the user's retinal implant. The implant's electrode set then emits a weak pulse, an electrical signal, that stimulates the remaining cells of the retina and then transmits the signal to the brain through the optic nerve.
However, it sounds good, but Argus II can only let the user see a black and white, like a mosaic of the world, which means that you can only see the outline of the object and the light and shadow. Users need constant training to enable their brains to read the signals from Argus II and eventually form an understandable image. A black and white picture with a mosaic of mosaics, I think everyone will feel a little low, but for a person who has lived for half a lifetime but suddenly lost sight for several years or even ten or twenty years, can see the outline again. And light and shadow, it is already a paradise experience.
“Argus? II users can see the outline of the door, as well as windows. One user in Italy has been able to recognize three or four letters at a time,†McGuire, CEO of Second Sight, said. “For the blind, seeing the outlines already allows them to have more activity, allowing them to perceive the direction of the surrounding environment. They can even see the fireworks.â€
The technology of Second Sight is by no means a stop for age-related macular degeneration. In the future, it will provide a solution for restoring vision for patients with age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. In fact, the Argus? II from Second Sight has been successfully applied to patients with age-related macular degeneration in 2015. In the United States alone, two million Americans suffer from age-related macular degeneration, and this data is predicted to grow more than twice in 2050.
Age-related macular degeneration is a very common disease in people over 65 years of age. The specific causes are still unknown, but according to research, the disease has a great connection with genetic factors and smoking. As Chinese society ages, the impact of age-related macular degeneration in China will only grow. At present, age-related macular degeneration is also a no cure.
Second Sight's Argus® II currently has 200 success stories in the United States. Unfortunately, the Argus II of Second Sight is still very expensive, and the cost of equipment and implant surgery is as high as $143,000, which is affordable for anyone, and has only been approved in some regions, such as the United States and Europe.
At the beginning of this year, VICE mentioned Second Sight in the documentary "Fighting Blindness", and finally let Second Sight's share price on NASDAQ surge 60% in a week, and the final increase was 22%. But even so, Second Sight is doing high-end research and development, the product is not facing the general public, let alone let the bionic eye solution become a mainstream means of combating blindness, which also leads to Second Sight More is a product that represents a future, not a business.
Second Sight, like other young medical technology companies, continues to burn money on research and development. In order to obtain funds for continued operation, Second Sight issues share options to existing shareholders at the beginning of the year, which is to give them the right to buy additional shares at a specific price for a specified period of time. Second Sight CEO, McGuire, said: "Based on current company sales and burning speed, the new funds will allow Second Sight to continue to operate until the end of 2017, before this should be no need to worry about funding." Second Sight is this One of the few medical technology companies that have been listed and are concerned about visual impairment in the past few years.
Source: Titanium Media
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