First bionic eye transplant performed

Jamie Carley suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that slowly kills retinal cells. She has been blind for 15 years, save for a faint light entering one eye. She gained a chance to recover some of that loss. She underwent five hours of surgery at the UCHealth Eye Center at the University of Colorado Hospital and awoke with a new vision system.

The device uses a small camera and micro-chip to stimulate the patient's optic nerve. A microchip had been implanted in the retina of one eye. Over both eyes, a pair of glasses with a small camera wirelessly transmit video to her microchip, stimulating her optic nerve and sending visual information to her brain.

The surgery is extremely rare and, for now, limited to people blinded by a single disease. Carley is the first recipient in Colorado and the second in the western United States.

But if the surgery proves effective, it could be used to treat other causes of blindness, such as macular degeneration in old age.

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