Revolutionary surgery against glaucoma
A BELFAST woman has become the first person in the UK or Ireland to have revolutionary eye surgery aimed at stopping the march of the blinding illness glaucoma, it has been claimed.
Mary McCall, 66, had been slowly losing her eyesight to the disease, which is responsible for causing blindness in more than 67 million people worldwide.
Surgeons at the Cathedral Eye Clinic in Belfast fitted Mrs McCall's eye with a device already being dubbed the "millimetre miracle".
The iStent is a tiny piece of titanium weighing just 60 microgrammes - and is the smallest medical device ever to be implanted into the human body.
It drains fluid away, lowering eye pressure from a sensitive part at the back of the eye which causes the glaucoma illness.
Details of the operation were disclosed by Cathedral Eye Clinic consultant Colin Willoughby as National Glaucoma Awareness Week got under way.
Glaucoma is a progressive and irreversible illness caused when the optic nerve is damaged by a build-up of fluid. Patients begin to lose peripheral vision and can go blind. Mrs McCall will soon undergo the 15-minute procedure on her second eye.
Mr Willoughby said: "This is a massive step forward for the treatment of glaucoma and has the potential to help so many people. We have now had time to assess Mrs McCall and we are delighted with the result."
Mrs McCall, a mother-of-six from Alliance Avenue in north Belfast, said: "The procedure has changed my life. My eyesight was getting worse and the procedure has stopped that. I would hate to go blind.
"The Cathedral Eye Clinic carried out the procedure for free and Mr Willoughby also removed a cataract in another operation, so that eye is brilliant now."
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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