FOCUS IN THE MEDIA

Thea Jordan:

Like most people, I noticed that my eyesight had started to deteriorate when I reached my 40s. One day, I realised I couldn't tell the time unless I held my watch really close to my face.

More worryingly, I found it difficult to read road signs when I was driving. I had to have two pairs of glasses - one for reading and one for long distance - but I didn't get on with them. I was always forgetting where I had left them. They got a severe bashing at work, too, so they had to be replaced often. I was spending a fortune every year.

I am a keen sportswoman and love scuba diving, so glasses were inconvenient. Also, I have to admit I felt dowdy wearing a pair when I went out in the evening with my husband.

Last year, I looked into the possibility of laser eye surgery, but I decided that it wasn't for me because it was too invasive and things could go wrong.

Then a friend told me about radio eye treatment. It is claimed to be 100% safe and takes only a few minutes. And, unlike laser surgery, the doctor does not make any cut into the cornea - the transparent layer forming the front of the eye - so there is little risk of infection.
I booked an appointment with a clinic in London. During the consultation, the surgeon, David Allamby, explained the procedure - which curves the cornea to improve sight - and I underwent a series of tests to make sure I was suitable.

I needed to have both eyes done because I had poor reading and distance vision. If you have only poor close-up vision, you just need one eye done.

I was happy to learn that I could go ahead, and the following day, I was back at the clinic for the treatment. I was not nervous at all; in fact, I was excited.

I lay on a couch in my normal clothes and a nurse put some anaesthetic drops in my eyes. Dr Allamby then put a retainer on one eye to hold the lids wide open. He used a microscope while he asked me to look into a blue light.

First, he made marks with ink on my cornea. Then he used a hand-held device to send radio waves into my cornea, making eight tiny dots in a ring around the edge, near the white of my eye.

This changes the shape of the cornea, making it more curved, which increases the focus power of the eye and so helps to improve vision.

It didn't hurt at all. It took about five minutes to do one eye. Then he did the same thing with my other eye, though this time he put two circles of eight dots around my cornea. This was to sharpen my reading vision.
The effect was instantaneous. As soon as the procedure was over, I glanced at my watch and was amazed that I could tell the time clearly. My vision was a bit blurry for a few hours and I felt a gritty sensation against my eyeballs, but the effect soon wore off.

Within two days, I could see perfectly.

I put antibiotic drops in my eyes four times a day for five days to minimise any risk of infection. Also, I needed mild pain-killing drops for the discomfort.
I had my first check-up three months after the operation, and everything was fine.

I might need to have it done again in a few years, as the natural ageing process continues.

It cost quite a lot but I consider it to be an investment - and I love the freedom of not having to wear glasses.
Dr David Allamby, an ophthalmic surgeon, is the medical director of the Horizon Eye Centre in London. He has performed more than 700 radio eye treatments. He says: Judith was an ideal candidate for conductive keratoplasty - known as radio eye treatment. She had problems with her eyesight due to ageing, known as presbyopia, and did not want to risk undergoing major surgery.

Radio eye surgery has been performed on 70 000 people worldwide. It has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US for correcting long-sightedness since 2002 and for correcting poor reading vision since 2003.

There have been many clinical studies that show it is very safe. In the latest FDA trial, there was a 0% chance of complications after 12 months. In very rare cases, it is possible to acquire an infection of the eye because of the procedure. We use radio frequency energy to make tiny holes in a circle around the cornea.
The cornea is actually a lens and does twice as much work as the internal lens inside the eyeball. If you make the cornea more powerful, you are helping compensate for the weakened lens - caused by ageing - inside the eye.

I use a hi-tech probe to produce a brief pulse of radio waves, which I apply to the cornea. This causes a mild contraction of collagen fibres around the edge of the cornea, rather like a belt being tightened up a couple of notches. This causes the cornea to become more curved in the centre, which increases the FOCUS Laser Visioning power of the eye.

The whole treatment can be performed in five minutes.
Eye problems due to growing older are caused by the lens inside the eye starting to stiffen with age and being less able to zoom in and out. We cannot change this lens easily but we can change the cornea. I operate so that one eye can focus on close-up objects and the other can focus on things in the distance. This blended vision works so well because of the way radio treatment reshapes the cornea, making it "multi-focal".

Normally, both eyes focus on the same thing and you cannot focus on things at different ranges at the same time. If you make the vision multi-focal, you can see objects in focus that are at different distances. This happens because we make the cornea so curved that it has a greater depth of field, and the range of focus is increased.

It can take a little while to get used to blended vision, but the brain does adapt to the different functions of two eyes so that you don't notice it. And with one in two adults developing presbyopia, I think radio eye treatment will soon be widespread.