{"id":183594,"date":"2017-06-14T18:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T18:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/after-20-years-of-darkness-bionic-eye-helps-man-see\/"},"modified":"2017-06-14T18:36:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T18:36:54","slug":"after-20-years-of-darkness-bionic-eye-helps-man-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/after-20-years-of-darkness-bionic-eye-helps-man-see\/","title":{"rendered":"After 20 years of darkness, bionic eye helps man see"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 20 years of darkness, there is light for a man in Medford, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

A bionic eye implant has helped Anthony Andreotolla gain back some vision. It’s not eyesight in the way most people see, but the technology is making a difference in his daily life.<\/p>\n

\"anthony-andreotolla-bionic-eye.png<\/span>
\n

Anthony Andreotolla, who suffers from a degenerative eye disease, can see for the first time in 20 years thanks to a new bionic eye.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“It’s not actual vision. It’s what they call artificial vision,” Andreotolla told CBS Boston<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that affects the retina. Andreotolla began to lose his vision in his teens and by his thirties, he couldn’t see anything.<\/p>\n

“Once everything is black, for many, many years, that was it,” he said.<\/p>\n

For 20 years he lived in that darkness until he became one of the first people<\/a><\/span> to receive a bionic eye<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

How it works<\/h3>\n

Every day, Andreotolla puts on special glasses and commutes on public transportation to his job in Boston about six miles south of his home.<\/p>\n

A tiny camera in the glasses sends images to a wearable computer and then those images are processed and sent wirelessly to an implant in his eye. The implant surgery took place in Baltimore at The Johns Hopkins Hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I don’t see things the way other people do. I see everything in different flashes, lights, shapes,” Andreotolla explained.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/span>
\n CBSN<\/span><\/p>\n

New glasses help blind man see his wife again<\/h3>\n

\n A blind man with a degenerative retinal disease was able to see his wife of 46 years thanks to an experimental bionic eye.\n <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s more of a cloudy, black and white vision, he explains.<\/p>\n

“I can tell the difference between a car or a bus or a truck. I can’t tell you what make the car is,” he said.<\/p>\n

That vision helps him navigate life more safely.<\/p>\n

After his commute, he arrives at his job as a substance abuse counselor at St. Anthony Shrine.<\/p>\n

“I have my hope back. Once I lost my sight I was resigned to be blind for the rest of my life. I’m not resigned to that anymore. I believe if I can live long enough, I’ll be able to see a lot of beautiful things,” Andreotolla said.<\/p>\n

The developer of the bionic eye is\u00a0Second Sight<\/a>\u00a0and they’re already working on the next generation of bionic eye with faster processing and sharper images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 20 years of darkness, there is light for a man in Medford, Massachusetts. A bionic eye implant has helped Anthony Andreotolla gain back some vision. It’s not eyesight in the way most people see, but the technology is making a difference in his daily life. Anthony Andreotolla, who suffers from a degenerative eye disease, Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}