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A contact lens-based system that uses a strategically placed drug polymer film to deliver medication gradually to the eye was shown to be as effective as daily eye drops in a preclinical model for managing glaucoma. In a study supported by a grant from the Boston Children’s Hospital, the effect of the drug-eluting contact lens was assessed in four glaucomatous monkeys.
Novel Lens Delivers Controlled Doses of Medicine
“Lens Replacement Surgery” (From the series “One Pagers”)
By Roger S. Reiss BSME MIT
After the invention of the microscope and the telescope, the human eye was the first and only detector for hundreds of years, only to be supplemented and in most cases supplanted by an electro-optical detector of various configurations.
The evolution of the eye has been and still is a mystery. Having recently had cataract surgery, my interest in the eye was stimulated. First, I wondered why “cataract surgery” is called “cataract surgery.” In cataract surgery, no surgery is performed on the cataracts (cataract material). A very small incision is made in the lens pocket and the cataract material is flushed out by using the opening to introduce the flushing substance, and the flushing substance carries out the cataract material through that opening. The cataract material may require ultrasonic fracturing to reduce particle size. A man- and machine-made lens is inserted into the opening. The opening may or may not require suturing. This procedure should more accurately be known as “lens replacement surgery.”
Epilog: After having lens replacement surgery myself, two haunting questions remain unanswered in my mind:
A. Where did the optical-quality fluid (vitreous) in the original eye lens and the eyeball come from, and how did it know where it belonged? Optical-quality liquid or gel occurs in the human eye but nowhere else in the human body.
B. How did the Creator (or whoever or whatever, a religious question) — without Physics 101 or Optics 101 or Warren Smith’s book on basic optics — determine the focal length of the eye lens (the distance from the eye lens to the retina; some people do need corrective glasses to achieve the correct value). The focal length of the human eye lens is a mathematical value based on measurements and calculations or both and could not have just evolved without some knowledge and information about basic optics.
I wish I could answer either of these two questions but I will have to wait for someone smarter than me. Until then let’s at least change the name of the operational procedure to reflect what is actually being performed, so that people will understand that their cataracts are not being operated on but that their eye lens is being replaced.
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ROGER S. REISS; SPIE Fellow; SPIE President Award 2000; Original Ad Hoc Chairperson of SPIE: Optomechanical Engineering and Instrument Design Group; Manager LinkedIn Group: “Photonic Instruments”; ; ; BSME: MIT.