Blindness Cured with 'Revolutionary' Bionic Chip

Sheila Irvine, one of the first patients on the trial in London, said before the implant she had to live with “two black discs” in front of her eyes, which stopped her reading and driving. “I was an avid bookworm, and I wanted that back. I was nervous, excited, all those things,” she said.

“Initially, I couldn’t see it at all. It was like a big cloud on the page, it was all just white. But I thought to myself, ‘There’s writing on this page, I’m gonna bloody well see it and I’m gonna keep going until I do.’ And then one day I started to see edges and I thought, ‘Here we go, here we go.’

“It’s a new way of looking through your eyes, and it was dead exciting when I began seeing a letter.”

Mahi Muqit, senior vitreoretinal consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Institute of Ophthalmology at UCL, added: “These are elderly patients who were no longer able to read, write or recognise faces due to lost vision.

“They couldn’t even see the vision chart before. They’ve gone from being in darkness to being able to start using their vision again, and studies have shown that reading is one of the things patients with progressive vision loss miss most.

“In the history of artificial vision, this represents a new era. Blind patients are actually able to have meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before.”

“This breakthrough underscores our commitment to pioneering technologies that provide hope to patients in need, and which have the ability to transform lives,” said Max Hodak, co-founder and chief executive of Science Corporation.

“We are excited about the potential of Prima to redefine vision restoration for these patients.”

“This study confirms that, for the first time, we can restore functional central vision in patients blinded by geographic atrophy,” said Dr Frank Holz, lead author of the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “The implant represents a paradigm shift in treating late-stage AMD.”