Since it opened a few months ago, an elite professional team in the field of eye health has concentrated on the Oftalvist Ophthalmology Clinic in Barcelona. Leading the medical department is Dr. Jeroni Nadal, one of the world's leading experts in vitreo-retinal surgery, immersed in "very exciting" technologies that are already revolutionizing the sector and will completely transform it in the immediate future.
"In about three years," Nadal calculates, they will allow many patients who suffer from intractable eye diseases today to have alternatives to recover their vision. They will be applicable to a very high percentage of ophthalmological ailments, including retinitis pigmentosa, atrophic type macular degeneration or degenerative myopia at the posterior pole level.
This enormous leap forward is produced, explains the doctor, "through a triple therapeutic path: gene therapy, cell therapy and artificial vision." Genetic is based on genetic reprogramming, on the modification of the gene that is at the origin of the dysfunction, while in the case of regenerative, healthy pluripotent cells are used to replace degenerated ones, thus restoring damaged tissues.
But the most promising is probably machine vision. In 2013, Nadal became the first specialist in Spain to carry out implant surgery using Second Sight's Argus II retinal implant, a 'bionic eye' that provides electrical stimulation of the retina and allows blind people to identify shapes and objects. Since then, technology has advanced by leaps and bounds: “To make an analogy, I would say that it is as if we have gone from black and white television to color television in these ten years”
Currently, the doctor leads, together with the engineer Jose Antonio Garrido from ICN2, the project Adaptive Retinal Implant Technology for Vision Restoration (i-Vision), one of the most outstanding in the world. The initiative has the Barraquer Foundation in cooperation with the UAB and four institutes: the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, the Institute of Photonic Sciences, the Institute of High Energy Physics and the Paris Vision Institute
To achieve artificial vision, he explains, "we use highly effective nanology, graphene-based neurostimulators, a practically pure carbon with a high conductivity speed, as a substitute for damaged retinal cells." After making a small incision at the scleral level of the eye, a device with more than 3,500 stimulators is placed, 10% of which are actually receptors, that is, they analyze the conductivity and resistance and adjust all the parameters to multiply their effectiveness
The device, in short, “learns by itself”. Through glasses, whose frame has a microcamera that captures the images, they are sent by radio waves to the microchip, restoring sight to the patient.
This technique can be applied to multiple ophthalmological problems, but not to all. According to Nadal, "patients with optic nerve problems and those who are unable to see light" would be ruled out. For these, however, there are also solutions on the way. “There are technologies similar to ours, also with graphene devices, which go directly to the occipital area of the brain.
We must understand that we do not see with our eyes, but through them. The eye captures the photons and sends it to the brain, which interprets this stimulus. Therefore, it is the brain that sees and that generates the vision. This is what this new technology is doing that makes it possible to bypass the ocular defect and send electrical signals directly to the brain through the optic nerve”, he points out.
Spain, says the doctor, is one of the countries with the highest quality of care and technique in ophthalmological pathology. "Some countries allocate a lot of financial resources to research, but in our country there is no such social or political awareness."
In this sense, he highlights that all the advances that i-Vision represents have been possible thanks to the financial support of CaixaBank, and points out that, naturally, future investment will be decisive so that patients can have access to these new techniques as soon as possible, which Without a doubt, many things will change.
