By Lori EhdeWhen 46-year-old Vicky Lee wakes up in the morning, she no longer has to grope for her glasses in order to see.The Magnolia woman now has 20-20 vision without the aid of contact lenses or eye glasses, thanks to lens implant surgery recently approved by the FDA."It’s amazing," said Lee, who had surgery on one eye at a time, 90 days apart. "They took that patch off, and I saw 20-20 with that eye right off the bat."Lee was part of an FDA-monitored clinical trial in January 2002 that studied the success of surgical eye lens implants.Lee’s surgeon, Dr. Vance Thompson, Sioux Falls, was one of two surgeons to testify in Washington, D.C., on the safety of the procedure. His clinical experience, along with that of 20 about other doctors, was used by the FDA to give final approval to the procedure in September.Lee said it didn’t bother her that her eyes were part of a clinical study. "I didn’t care," she said. "My eyes were so bad, I was just excited to get it done."Lee’s prescription before surgery was +10 and she had astigmatism, which meant it was difficult and costly to get contact lenses.Her glasses, which she referred to as "Coke bottles" had become so thick, she hated to think about not wearing contact lenses.Because her vision was so poor, she wasn’t a good candidate for laser procedures, because they would thin her corneas too much.All this made Lee the perfect candidate for the Verisyse Lens implant, as it’s now called.Instead of wearing the lens in front of the eye, as with glasses or contact lenses, or reshaping the eye with laser technology, the Verisyse Lens is made to fit inside the eye.The procedure takes about 15 minutes and permanently corrects nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.Since no tissue is removed, severe visual disorders like Lee’s are now correctable, and the operation is reversible.Lee and other patients with the implanted lenses say there’s no eye irritation."I would definitely recommend having it done," Lee said. "It really is painless."Thompson is director of refractive surgery at Sioux Valley Clinic — Vance Thompson Vision, Sioux Falls. He’s one of the world’s leading eye surgeons and conducted more than one-third of the nationwide clinical trials.There are currently 100 people on a waiting list to have the Verisyse Lens procedure performed on their eyes.
