ShareThisBy MARY POWERS
Candace Hair's right eye still looked red and angry, but for the first time in her life she wasn't in the front row when fall classes resumed, and when she drove home she actually saw the road and the other cars.
Four days earlier she was lying in an operating room in Memphis, Tenn. The surgeon made a small slit in the transparent cornea covering her right eye and slipped in a permanent contact lens.
Then, using a tool that resembled a miniature crochet hook, he rotated the plastic lens until it covered her pupil and used tiny tweezers to open the arms at either side of the shiny lens. They pinched a bit of bright blue iris as they closed, anchoring the contact.
Less than 15 minutes after he picked up a scalpel, Dr. Subba Gollamudi needed only a single stitch to close the incision.
Implanted lenses are the latest option for people tired of eyeglasses.
"It is nice to have one more thing to offer patients," said Dr. Nicola Kim, an ophthalmologist and assistant professor at the Jones Eye Institute University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
But Kim noted that implants involve a trade-off. "Any manipulation of the eye will usually cause cataracts to develop earlier" and require another surgery, she said. "Wearing a minus 15 pair of glasses is not a great option either," she said, referring to the strength _ and substantial thickness _ of corrective lenses.
FDA approval for the lenses required manufacturers to conduct five-year follow-up studies to track the rates at which patients developed cataracts, retinal or other eye problems.
Gollamudi, an ophthalmologist, said the lenses are the only option for patients like Hair who are healthy but extremely near-sighted. The average American requires corrected lenses between minus one and minus 10. Hair was minus 18.
Now 22, Hair was in glasses before she was in kindergarten. It wasn't long before she needed lenses so thick they distorted her eyes and flared at the edges like bell-bottom jeans on a fashion model. "They were officially Coke bottles," she said. "They were constantly falling off my nose."
The lenses Gollamudi implanted in Candace Hair's eyes were about the thickness of a fingernail and diameter of a pencil eraser. They are a variation on the plastic lenses used for years to restore sight to eyes clouded by cataracts, and are positioned in front of the iris, the colored part of the eye. Marketed as Verisyse they are manufactured by Advanced Medical Optics, of Santa Ana, Calif.
The other FDA-approved implant is positioned behind the iris. That lens, marketed as Visian ICL, is a product of Staar Surgical of Monrovia, Calif.
The lenses Hair received have been implanted in more than 150,000 eyes worldwide, according to the manufacturer. In a U.S. study leading up to FDA approval, 92 percent of the 662 patients enrolled could legally drive without glasses after receiving the implants. In 44 percent, patients scored a perfect 20/20. All had moderate to severe near-sightedness.
A study of 294 patients who received the other implant showed 95 percent no longer needed glasses to drive and 59 percent had 20/20 or better vision.
Patients with diabetes and glaucoma aren't candidates for the lenses.
There are risks, including infection, inflammation and vision loss. Although the implants can be removed, they are designed to be permanent. The FDA also noted the implants were associated with a small _ less than 2 percent annually _ loss of the cells lining the cornea's underside. The long-term consequences of that aren't known.
