(ANSA) – ROME, OCTOBER 26 – A latest generation artificial retina was implanted for the first time in Italy in a seventy-year-old blind person which, upon awakening after the surgery, allowed man to perceive, through special glasses, the light. The intervention, carried out by the director of the Ophthalmology Unit of the University Hospital Foundation Agostino Gemelli Irccs and Ordinary of the Ophthalmology Clinic at the Catholic University campus of Rome, Stanislao Rizzo, lasted just two hours. The retina implanted in the patient, suffering from a severe form of retinitis pigmentosa that caused vision loss, is called NR600 and was developed by the start-up Nano Retina, which has its headquarters in Herzliya, the ‘Silicon Valley Israeli, near Tel Aviv. The one carried out at Gemelli – reports the same Polyclinic in a note – is the sixth implant (the first in Italy) in humans of the new device, after those carried out last year in Israel and Belgium (the patients operated so far have an age from 59 to 81 years old). The NR600 artificial retina is a high-tech jewel, the result of over a decade of research. The implant, as big as the tip of a pencil (5 mm in diameter x 1 mm thick), is placed by a super expert in retinal surgery over the surface of the retina and the three-dimensional electrodes of which it is composed, penetrate between the cells retinal cells, taking the place of photoreceptors (the specialized cells that allow us to ‘see’), activating with their impulses the ganglion cells that transmit information to the brain, making it travel along the optical pathways. Implanting this device restores some of the retinal function, but does not restore sight. “Immediately after the implant the patient can return to ‘see’ the light – reads the note from Gemelli – but generally the rehabilitation program is started a couple of weeks after the operation”. Professor Rizzo was a pioneer in artificial retinal implants: in 2011 he was the first to use Argus, the first retinal prosthesis used in a blind patient. (HANDLE).
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