October 2003 Mechanical Engineering: Editorial

editorial

A Clear Vision

By
John G. Falcioni,
Editor-in-Chief

Two years ago, dad thought for sure that he was going blind.

He was 80 then, and his blurred vision kept him from seeing whether his beloved New York Mets were on the field, or at bat. His eyesight problems had come on all of a sudden, within about eight months.

To make our fears even worse, he remembered that his grandfather, Pascuale, who was born, lived, and died in the little town of Penna San Giovanni—population 1,500 then—in the Marche region on the Adriatic coast of Italy, had gone blind before his death, which occurred when he was well into his 90s.

Today, my father continues to have problems with the Mets, their weak hitting, and their last-place standing in the National League East, but at least he can see the players and their mishaps. The return of his vision, he swears, is due to the "magical" hands of his ophthalmologist and to the significant technical advances in the field of eye surgery.

Practically speaking, dad was indeed going blind. It turned out that he had significant cataracts, which quickly spread over the lenses of both his eyes.

A cataract develops when the protein in the human lens clumps together. The lens is arranged to let light pass through and focus on the retina. But when clumping occurs, it clouds small areas of the lens, thus blocking some light from reaching its destination and interfering with vision.

In my dad's case, the lenses of both eyes were badly covered with protein. One of the typical causes of cataracts is simply getting old. Diabetes and too much exposure to the sun are two other causes. But research is ongoing to get a better grasp of why cataracts develop.

Two relatively pain-free cataract surgeries later, one on each eye, dad now sports substitute lenses and a much greater appreciation for his sense of sight.

No one can say for sure whether Pascuale suffered from the same plight that his grandson did. But whatever the disease that may have caused my great-grandfather's blindness, we hear good news from associate editor Gayle Ehrenman on the prospects of restoring vision to the impaired.

In this month's cover story we learn that five Department of Energy laboratories and several universities are working on a project to design a MEMS device that can be implanted on the surface of the retina. It may return vision to about 1.3 million people in the United States who have lost their sight to macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, two leading causes of blindness.

This artificial retina is intended for patients who still have the neural wiring from the eye to the brain but who lack photoreceptor activity.

Also in this issue, we talk with Robert Park, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who is using finite-element analysis software to study stresses on the eye that lead to detached retinas. This research is being conducted with an eye toward prevention by understanding the mechanics of retinal detachments.

All my senses come alive when I remember my trips to Penna San Giovanni and the sights and sounds of my cousins' kids playing in the cornfields, the smell of Zia Gina's pasta cooking on the old stove and even the mediocre taste of Zio Leo's homemade vino rosso.

Developments in technology give me the confidence to know that, if I'm lucky, I won't lose any of my senses for a long, long time.