Eighty year old Merrill Smith can see again. The Hilo man slowly began losing his vision over the past few years, but thanks to a revolutionary surgical procedure his eyesight is improving.
He said: “Actually I couldn’t see faces and I had a lot of dead spots where I was looking. Where ever I concentrated on would just go behind the fog.”
According to this article, Hawaii is one of the first states to offer this procedure:
But lucky for the Hawaii Island man, who used to be a finish carpenter and mechanic, a new technology utilizing an implantable eye telescope is now available in Honolulu.
“So just like the telescopes we use to look at the stars it’s the same magnification principals but literally in a microscopic version,” says Dr. Michael Bennett of the Retina Institute of Hawaii.
Ten centers across the U.S. offer this new technology and Honolulu’s Retina Institute is the only one in the state to offer it.
“That is, the telescope itself, the image goes through the front part of the lens and is projected onto the front part of the retina,” Dr. Bennett says.
Smith is highly optimistic about this amazing new surgery. He said:
“I am right on the edge of being able to read. I mean, I got an idea, it gets clearer and clearer everyday.”
And the best news of all is that this $15,000 procedure is covered by Medicare for those who qualify. It just goes to show you that amazing things are happening in our great state.