Shortly after a Minnesota man received a bionic eye implant, news has surfaced of another person’s life changing experience.
A 72-year-old woman from Honolulu, who has been blind for two years, received a new bionic eye at the Eye Surgery Center of Hawaii last week, according to the U.K’s The Daily Mail.
The elderly Japanese woman was reportedly the first person to receive a bionic eye implant in the Asia Pacific region. The woman, whose identity was not released, will soon be able to start seeing motion and different shades of grey, according to Dr. Gregg Kokame, who performed the operation.
“She’ll actually start to see motion, actually start to see somebody walk into the room and be able to see different shades of grey,” stated Kokame.
The woman will reportedly have to wear a special type of glasses that works as a camera and will process images to the device implanted in the patent’s eye.
“If you can imagine if somebody is in total darkness and then they are actually able to see down a hallway and see somebody walk in a room, it’s just a huge impact on their life,” stated Dr. Kokame.
The surgery, which lasted four hours for the woman, took over 25 years to develop, according to CBS News. Currently, the bionic eye reportedly only works for patients who have the hereditary disease and retinitis pigmentosa.
However, bionic eye implant inventor Dr. Mark Humayan reportedly stated that he hopes the device will be able to assist more patients in the future.
The device, which has been approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration, is reportedly estimated to be $144,000.
“We have hundreds of millions of photo receptors in our eye, hundreds of millions, and with only 60 pixels patients who were completely blind can see large objects, can tell a table from a chair or a knife from a fork or a plate so it’s very exiting to see what the brain is able to fill in,” stated Humayan.
