Stem cell treatments have promised regenerative cures for many untreatable conditions since the first successful stem cell transplant back in 1956. In the world of eyecare, where damaged retinal tissue results in permanent and uncorrectable vision loss, the prospect of recovering vision with a stem cell therapy is an understandably exciting one. Much excitement surrounded the successful Phase I/II clinical study of injecting stem cells into the eye to treat conditions like Stargardt macular dystrophy and macular degeneration in February 2015.  Of the 18 patients treated with stem cell injections in that study, there were no significant adverse events and 47% of eyes showed either improvement or no worsening in vision over a 2 year period.  But unfortunately these early successes in the field of ocular stem cell injections have led some to take risky approaches to gain financially from the excitement around stem cell treatments and the desperation of patients that are faced with living with permanent vision loss.

Pluripotent stem cells from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine which is currently doing FDA approved stem cell research for retinitis pigmentosa.

Age Related Macular Degeneration with advanced central vision disruption image credit to eyedolatry.blogspot.com

Imagine a world where your central vision was nothing but a blur or distortion.  Any time you try look at something straight on, you can only see the periphery of the object you are trying to see.  Try recognizing faces or reading your cell phone or a book with nothing but peripheral vision.  This is what the world looks like for the millions of people worldwide that have advanced macular degeneration.  There is no cure for this devastating visual condition, but a new implantable telescopic device can help restore some of that central vision zone for the first time ever.

The CentraSight implantable telescope is made by VisionCare Ophthalmics, and is a vision enhancing device that can improve central vision range when placed inside the eye. Traditionally, patients with central vision loss had to rely on handheld or spectacle mounted telescopes to try to enhance their central vision. These devices were bulky and distracting, not to mention their limited visual potential (about 10 degrees of field is all they can provide!).  The CentraSight implantable telescope is just over 4 mm in size and sits discretely in the eye, making it less obvious to those around you that you are using a low vision device, and also freeing up your hands that would have otherwise had to hold the magnifying lens up to the eye whenever you wanted to use it.  Because the telescopic optics are inside your eye, there is the added benefit of a much larger observable field of view, between 20 and 24 degrees of gained central vision area is attainable with the implant/

Enlarged view of the CentraSight implantable telescope.  This is actually under 5 mm in size via

Implant inside the eye.  It is placed in the same place that a post-cataract surgery implant would traditionally be inserted via

Who Qualifies?
In October the FDA updated the candidacy needs for patients interested in the CentraSight implant to offer younger patients the opportunity to pursue the implant.  The new requirements are:

1) Bilateral Central Vision Loss due to Age Related Macular Degeneration

• If one eye is damaged with macular degeneration but the other still has great preserved central vision, then the patient is not a candidate.  The implant needs to be placed on the better seeing eye in order to provide of any improvement in perceived vision.  If the implant is put in the bad eye, then the brain will just suppress the bad eye's image and use the good eye only like it was doing before surgery.  You would have just had a very expensive surgery without any visual benefit.  In order for the telescope to work, your brain has to want to process its image, and that is why it must be placed on the eye with better vision to achieve the best effect.