1st Implantable Telescope For Vision Cleared By FDA

WASHINGTON — U.S. health officials have approved a first-of-its-kind technology to counter a leading cause of blindness in older adults – a tiny telescope implanted inside the eye.

The Implantable Miniature Telescope aims to help in the end stages of incurable age-related macular degeneration, a creeping loss of central vision that blocks reading, watching TV, eventually even recognizing faces.

The idea: Surgically insert the Implantable Miniature Telescope into one eye for better central vision, while leaving the other eye alone to provide peripheral vision. The brain must fuse two views into a single image, and the Food and Drug Administration warned Tuesday that patients need post-surgery rehabilitation to make it work.

There's little to help such advanced patients today aside from difficult-to-use handheld or glasses-mounted telescopes, while the new implanted telescope – smaller than a pea – can improve quality of life for the right candidate, said Dr. Malvina Eydelman, FDA's ophthalmic devices chief.

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