The operation, performed along with cataract surgery by ophthalmology Prof. Ayala Pollak of Rehovot's Kaplan Hospital, is still considered experimental, as it is in the US and South America, where it has been performed for only the past five months. Called the IMT telescope, and only three millimeters in diameter and 4.6 mm. The telescope, inserted in only a few minutes under local anesthetic, is used on patients whose eye can follow an object with natural eye movements and whose AMD is in the static phase. AMD is the leading cause of impaired vision and blindness among the elderly in the Western world. Since the disorder causes the deterioration of nerve tissue in the eye, therapeutic treatment has had only limited success.
Patients lose their center of vision and see only on the periphery, as if squinting through a tube.
In advanced cases, the patient can't read, write or function independently. Until now, AMD patients have been assisted by using magnifying glasses, external telescopes, and enlargement of text on a computer screen. But they are external and inconvenient solutions that elderly people often find difficult to use. The telescope is implanted in one eye only, which is then used for central vision, while the other eye is used for peripheral vision. Patients must practice this use to coordinate among their eyes, said Pollak.