It's a procedure that everyone, if they live long enough, will need eventually. For 55-year-old Kate Reiss, the future is now after her visit to the Medical University of South Carolina's Storm Eye Institute.

"If we live long enough, everyone will get a cataract," said Dr M. Edward Wilson Jr, the chairman of the university's Department of Ophthalmology.

Cataracts are the clouding of the clear lenses in the eyes. The lens becomes brittle, and yellowish. Although some cataracts are congenital and occur in young children - Wilson's specialty - most of us will get them with age.

Reiss, a school teacher who lives in the US city of Charleston, recently underwent cataract surgery in which she received a new, cutting-edge multifocal lens implant.

The teacher sees better than she has in years for both distance and reading. She has no more use for glasses, something usually required by replacing the cataract with a single focal-length lens.

"It's phenomenal. It's just unbelievable," said Reiss, who had a lens implanted in her second eye a few weeks after the first.

"For the first couple of days, when I would read the newspaper in the morning, I had my glasses right there," she said. But she never uses them. "I haven't had the nerve to throw them away yet. But I don't use them for anything," she said.

"This is the first implant I have come across where we have a real wow effect," said Dr Kerry Solomon, the director of the Magill Laser Center at the institute.

"They are reading labels on medicine bottles. They are reading phone books. They are reading stock tables without glasses as well as driving their cars and watching TV," he said.

The storm Eye Institute is one of a handful of centers across the United States conducting clinical tests on the new generation lenses, which could be approved for general use by late next year, Solomon said.

"We have put in 60 to 70 of these implants now and no one uses glasses for anything," Solomon said.

"The technology for these devices has advanced so much," said Dr Janine Smith, the deputy clinical director at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. "In 25 years from now, when there are roughly twice as many people over 65, there will be many more new options than in the past."

Surgical techniques have improved so much that, in many cases, the procedure is done as outpatient surgery.

Close

Today's Top News		Top Lifestyle News
+Beijing turns 850 in style ( 2003-09-19) +China's military chief to visit US next month ( 2003-09-19) +China, EU launch space partnership ( 2003-09-19) +Focus: Domestic violence on the rise ( 2003-09-19) +Call to avoid risks in real-estate sector ( 2003-09-19)		+Surgery makes glasses obsolete ( 2003-09-19) +Alzheimer's day ( 2003-09-19) +Chinese Potter comes on Sunday ( 2003-09-19) +Canadian gay married couple hits snag at U.S. border ( 2003-09-19) +Emil to thrill city with vintage tunes ( 2003-09-19)