Lens implant offers chance at beating lazy eye

AP Photo: Dr. Paul Dougherty inserts a rolled-up intraocular
lens implant through a tiny incision in the...

"WASHINGTON - Dr. Paul Dougherty delicately slipped a tiny lens inside the right eye of 7-year-old Megan Garvin — a last-ditch shot at saving her sight in that eye.

The California girl last week became one of a small number of U.S. children to try an experimental surgery to prevent virtual blindness from lazy eye diagnosed too late, or too severe, for standard treatment.

The new approach: Implantable lenses, the same kind that nearsighted adults can have inserted for crisper vision — but that aren't officially approved for use in children.

"Without this technology, we couldn't help her," says Dougherty, a prominent Los Angeles eye surgeon who invited The Associated Press to document Megan's surgery. "This would be written off as a blind eye."

Up to 5 percent of children have amblyopia, commonly called lazy eye, where one eye is so much stronger than the other that the brain learns to ignore the weaker eye. Untreated, the proper neural connections for vision don't form, eventually rendering that eye useless."

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