Revolutionary eye injection saved my sight, says first-ever patient

"One of them - the first-ever - is Nicki Guy, 47, who is sharing her story exclusively with the BBC. She says the results are incredible: "It's life-changing. It's given me everything back. I can see my child grow up. "I've gone from counting fingers and everything being really blurry to being able to see." Currently, she can see and read most lines of letters on an eye test chart."

"With hypotony, pressure within the eyeball becomes dangerously low, leading it to cave in on itself. It can happen if there is poor production of the natural jelly-like fluid inside the eye, following trauma or inflammation, for example. Sometimes it's a side effect of eye surgery or certain medications. Without treatment people can go blind. Before now, doctors have tried using steroids and silicone oil to plump up the eye."

"But this can be toxic over long periods and doesn't restore much vision. Even when the cells at the back of the eye used for sight are working, the silicone oil is difficult to see through, causing blurry vision. The experts from Moorfields decided to try a different approach with something they already had in their cupboard - a low-cost, transpa"

Moorfields hospital in London is the world's first dedicated clinic for hypotony and treated eight patients with a novel approach; seven responded to the therapy in a pilot study. One patient, Nicki Guy, 47, regained substantial vision and can now read most lines on an eye test chart, a major improvement from severe blurriness and near-counting-fingers vision. Hypotony causes dangerously low intraocular pressure that lets the eyeball cave in, arising from poor fluid production, trauma, inflammation, surgery, or medications, and can lead to blindness. Previous treatments used steroids or silicone oil, which can be toxic long-term and cause persistent blurriness. Moorfields clinicians tried a different approach using a low-cost, transparent product available in their cupboard and achieved notable visual restoration in most patients.

Read at www.bbc.com