Bionic 'Super Lenses' Could Correct Vision Deterioration

Bionic ocular implants that correct both long and shortsightedness, allowing patients to throw away their glasses for good, could be available in as little as five years.

Researchers at Aston University (Birmingham, United Kingdom) are developing so-called "bionic surgery” which promises treatment of both long and shortsightedness. The new implantable intraocular lens (IOL), which is attached to the muscles of the eye, would be extra-flexible, allowing it to be formed into a different shape by the eye's muscles, so that the eye can focus on both near and distant objects, and all points in between (a process known as accommodation). The new surgery is also claimed to prevent future cataracts in those implanted with the lens, since the IOL replaces the natural, biological lens. The surgical procedure is similar to cataract surgery.

"As you get older, the lens of your eye hardens and is no longer able to change its shape and focus, so you have to hold something further away to read it; by 45, you can no longer stretch your arms far enough and you need glasses,” said lead investigator optometrist Professor James Wolffsohn, Ph.D. "Everyone over 45 would benefit because it means they will be able to see distance and near absolutely naturally. It is the true definition of a bionic eye. You are replacing something that has aged in the eye with a technological structure.”

While using an IOL implant to correct vision clouded by a cataract or presbyopia is similar to the new lens being developed, there is no accommodation. The eye's natural lens is replaced by either a monofocal intraocular lens (used to give clear point focus either at a distance or close up), or multifocal IOLs, which allow correction of vision at all distances. However, in both cases, deterioration in vision requires repeat intraocular surgery and replacement of the lens. The new lens would be a permanent implant.

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