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Lasik eye surgery was successfully carried out in the United States since the late 90s, helping nearly 40 million patients to improve their vision thanks to a procedure that cuts into the eye using lasers. A few 600,000 surgeries approved by Food and Drug Administration are carried out each year on American adults.
Now the researchers say they have found an alternative method that would not need invasive incisions and could be cheaper.
It uses a process called electromechanical remodeling, which helps reshape the cornea using electric current. The cornea is a clear dome -shaped structure at the front of the eye that helps us process the images. Irregular corneas are the cause of vision and astigmatism to research and myopic, and the lasik repairs this by burning the tissues to reshape it.
“The whole effect was discovered by accident,” said Brian Wong, professor and surgeon at the University of California statement. “I considered living tissues as tight materials and I discovered this whole process of chemical modification.”
Although work is at its beginnings, it could offer an alternative to Lasik. Although surgery has been safe played for almost 30 years with rare complicationsIt has some limitations and risks. Surgeons say that the cornea cut compromises the structural integrity of the eye.
This procedure has not yet been carried out in humans, but researchers previously used electromechanical reshaping to modify scars and skin in pigs and rabbit ears rich in cartilage.
By working with rabbit eyeballs, they built “contact lenses” in platinum which served as a model for the corrected form of the cornea, placing them on a rabbit eye globe in a saline solution intended to imitate natural tears. After about a minute after a small electric load at the lens, the curvature of the cornea was in accordance with the shape of the lens. This happened at the same time as the Lasik, with fewer steps, no incision and cheaper equipment.
Then they repeated the step on 12 other rabbit eyelashes. Of these dozen, 10 were treated as if they had a vision for myopic, and the researchers succeeded. In others, they have seen that their technique could be able to reverse a certain nebulosity caused by chemicals to the cornea, which is currently treatable only by a complete transplant of the cornea.
In the future, researchers plan tests on living rabbits and examine myopia and astigmatism. The uncertainties in the scientific funding of the team suspended these plans, but Michael Hill, professor of chemistry in the Western College, will present his conclusions this week at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society.
“There is a long road between what we have done and the clinic. But, if we get there, this technique is largely applicable, much cheaper and potentially even reversible,” said Hill.
