'Bionic eye' restores sight for UK woman in pioneering op

A blind woman from Cardiff who has had some of her sight restored with a "bionic eye" said discovering she was once again able to read a clock "felt like Christmas Day".

Rhian Lewis, 49, had a new version of a German-made electronic implant fitted in the back of her eye, says The Guardian. She is the first person outside Germany to have had the procedure with the updated device.

Lewis suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative inherited condition which left her with no sight in her right eye and almost none in her left eye.

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The mother of two underwent the surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in June. A tiny electronic chip covered in around 1,500 light sensors was placed at the back of the retina in her right eye.

The device is controlled by a magnetic coil implanted behind her ear that she wears like a hearing aid.

When the implant is first fitted, users typically see nothing but flashes of light as the chip feeds electronic signals to the nerves behind the eye. However, within a few weeks the brain learns how to interpret those signals into shapes and objects.

The resulting images can be "black and white and grainy", says the newspaper, but can still "transform lives".

In Lewis's case, she was taken onto the streets of Oxford after her operation and was immediately able to identify a silver car. She said: "I walked up the street and the lady from social services said to me to point out anything I thought might or might not be there.

"And the first thing I thought, 'There might be something there' was a car, a silver car, and I couldn't believe it because the signal was really strong and that was the sun shining on the silver car.

"I was just so excited. I was quite teary. The enormity of it didn't hit me until I'd actually got home, thinking, 'Oh my God, what have I done? I've actually spotted something out that I haven't been able to do.'"

The test of whether she could tell the time on a large clock for the first time in about six years was even more dramatic. "Oh my God. Honest to God, that felt like Christmas Day," she said.