Blind NHS patients to be fitted with pioneering bionic eye

The NHS is to pay for 10 people to be implanted with a “bionic eye”, a pioneering technology that can restore some sight to those who have been blind for years.

Only a handful of people have undergone surgery in trials so far to equip them to use Argus II, which employs a camera mounted in a pair of glasses and a tiny computer to relay signals directly to the nerves controlling sight. The decision to fund the first 10 NHS patients to be given the bionic eye could pave the way for the life-changing technology to enter the mainstream.

Bionic eye graphic

Those who will get the equipment can currently see nothing more than the difference between daylight and darkness. The system allows the brain to decode flashes of light, so that they can learn to see movement.

One of three patients to have had the implant into the retina in trials at Manchester Royal Eye hospital is Keith Hayman, 68, from Lancashire, who has five grandchildren. He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s. The disease causes cells in the retina gradually to stop working and eventually die. Hayman, who was originally a butcher, was registered blind in 1981, and forced to give up all work.

“Having spent half my life in darkness, I can now tell when my grandchildren run towards me and make out lights twinkling on Christmas trees,” he said. “I would be talking to a friend, who might have walked off and I couldn’t tell and kept talking to myself. This doesn’t happen anymore, because I can tell when they have gone.” They may seem like little things, he said, but “they make all the difference to me”.

The NHS will fund the first 10 patients during 2017 to have surgery at Manchester and at Moorfields Eye hospital in London. All will be carefully followed, to gather data on their progress and assess how much the bionic eye improves their daily lives. If the results are good, more patients are likely to receive the treatment in the future.

“This highly innovative NHS-funded procedure shows real promise and could change lives,” said Dr Jonathan Fielden, director of specialised commissioning at NHS England. “The NHS has given the world medical innovations ranging from modern cataract surgery to new vaccines and hip replacements. Now once again the NHS is at the forefront of harnessing ground-breaking science for the benefit of patients in this country.”

Professor Paulo Stanga, who first performed the surgery at the Manchester hospital in 2009, said they were very grateful to NHS England. “I personally believe this is a landmark decision,” he said. “It will significantly benefit patients who are completely blind – not only patients with retinitis pigmentosa and their families, but hopefully other patients in the future with other conditions, such as age-related macular degeneration.”

At the moment, there is no proven benefit from gene and stem cell therapies, said Stanga, even though he believes they will one day help. So the bionic eye is the only treatment that can give back a degree of vision to those who are completely blind..

There are an estimated 16,000 people with RP in the UK with varying degrees of deterioration in their vision. About a tenth can no longer see to count the fingers on a hand. Between 160 and 320 are thought to be eligible for a bionic eye operation. The numbers with age-related macular degeneration, however, are far higher – it is the commonest cause of blindness or severe vision loss. The ‘bionic eye’ treatment, including surgery, follow-up, equipment and rehabilitation, costs £150,000.

Some patients will do better than others, said Stanga. “Patients need to learn to interpret the newly acquired visual function,” he said. “They are going to be experiencing a pattern of light and darkness. The more they use the device, the more they learn to interpret it.

“They are not going to be able to discern faces but if they can see somebody is standing in front of them and in what direction the person is moving, that is great benefit for them. One of the main complaints people have is the feeling of isolation that they suffer. Some of our patients tell us they go to the pub and no longer feel that they may be talking to themselves.”

Blind NHS patients to be fitted with pioneering bionic eye

The pioneering surgeon who healed guys scarred by war, a new monument created in his honour - and the impressive twist of fate that hyperlinks them

In the finish McIndoe and his team in West Sussex “fixed up” 649 servicemen – men who underwent such revolutionary treatment method that they rakishly dubbed themselves The Guinea Pig Club.

Their disfigurement meant the chance of getting shunned by sweethearts and buddies, their lives blighted. So McIndoe not only treated them, he also stood up for them. “He had enormous battles with the authorities,” says Montfort Bebb, now 86. “He stated, ‘You treat my boys effectively.’ He even had a keg of beer for them in the ward. He had to give them the odd dressing-down, they were young men – they did misbehave – but they loved him.”

Such devotion suggests that handful of guys more richly deserve being immortalised in bronze than Sir Archibald McIndoe. But by the time, two years in the past, that Jacquie Pinney, chief executive of the health care analysis charity Blond McIndoe, began a campaign to erect a statue to McIndoe, his name and popularity had faded from the public eye.

The charity was founded in 1961 by the industrialist Neville Blond, who lived close to East Grinstead and noticed McIndoe’s operate there first-hand. He admired how McIndoe had taken present, primitive, plastic-surgical treatment tactics and pioneered new techniques that transformed not only the lives of his sufferers, but also the total area of reconstructive surgery.

But despite McIndoe’s achievements, there have been no statues or monuments to his honour, even in his native New Zealand. “There was practically nothing,” says Pinney. “I felt it was long overdue.”

Hence when she known as Martin Jennings, the acclaimed sculptor of the considerably-loved John Betjeman statue in St Pancras station, she was worried that he would not know who McIndoe was: “I assumed he would consider, ‘Who are these weird folks calling from East Grinstead?’”

When she got by way of to him, he went quiet on the line, apparently confirming her worst fears. She require not have anxious. “It was incredible,” says Jennings now. “She imagined that I would by no means have heard of McIndoe. But in truth I knew all about him.”

Above the program of the ensuing conversation, Martin Jennings relevant how his father, Michael, had been a tank commander in the war. On the afternoon of October 17 1944, with the Allies bearing down on the Maas canal, he was leading a troop of four tanks from the 15/19 King’s Royal Hussars on a push by means of heavily fortified German positions east of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.

All of a sudden his Cromwell tank was hit by a shell. The driver was wounded but, determined to press on, an undaunted Jennings switched to another tank and continued the advance. He was significantly less lucky second time round. The shell that hit his commandeered tank killed its driver. As the armoured automobile erupted into flames, Jennings himself was badly burned. He had small time to reflect on his issue.

“In his diary he recorded that the Germans have been ‘coming on a bit’,” says his son. “I consider that’s a euphemism for massive numbers of them trying to kill him.”

Below hefty machine-gun fire, he produced it back to his personal lines. From there he was evacuated to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where his head and his hands were completely bound in bandages. He was 23.

His sisters visited and fed him grapes by way of a mouth‑hole in the wrappings. But he also acquired one more visitor – Archie McIndoe, who was on one of his typical excursions of the nation to see if there had been sufferers that he may well be capable to assist.

Michael Jennings was unusual for a Guinea Pig, in that he was not an airman. None the much less, he was transferred to East Grinstead and, over the course of the next two many years, underwent a host of skin grafts and reconstructive procedures at the hands of McIndoe and his fellow surgeon, Percy Jayes.

At the outset, Michael Jennings’s morale could hardly have been reduce. His sisters found him staring into a mirror, repeating: “I’m burned to a crisp. I’m burned to a crisp.”

But, as his son notes, “McIndoe had this outstanding capacity to transfer his self confidence to his patients.”

Jack Perry can don’t forget that golden touch: “He sat on my bed and kindly spoke to me. He explained: ‘I see you play a whole lot of sport. Properly, you are going to perform once again. Perhaps not as well, but you definitely will play.’”

That ability to lift spirits was an important component of the McIndoe treatment. “His sufferers, like my father, have been such younger males,” says Martin Jennings. “They have been hoping to get married, have young children and a normal daily life. Out of the blue they have been plunged into the prospect of a existence of passivity and victimhood. But McIndoe was so upbeat. His ethos was that these horrible injuries did not mean that their lives have been over.”

Michael Jennings was 1 of individuals who, with McIndoe’s support, refused to accept that his daily life was more than. In 1952, he received married, and he and his wife had 11 young children.

These days, Martin Jennings describes his loved ones connection and the call from Jacquie Pinney as “an astonishing coincidence”. She had discovered in the sculptor a man who had lengthy nursed the concept of producing a monument to the guy who had cared for his father and overseen “significant improvement to the decrease half of his encounter – to his nose, mouth, lips”.

Certainly it is a hardly a stretch to recommend that with out McIndoe, Michael Jennings may in no way have married, and his sculptor son may possibly never have been born.

It has taken two years considering that that 2012 telephone contact for the project to come to fruition. On one particular research journey to East Grinstead, Jennings asked for data from the war. There he turned up a file featuring a familiar face. For 10 many years right after he was burned, Michael Jennings refused to be photographed. But there, in the hospital files, have been photos from that lost decade that McIndoe had taken to plan and perform his operations.

“That was really moving,” says Jennings. “I was seeking at photos of my father, and he was the exact same age in the pictures as my very own sons have been in true lifestyle. I discovered myself feeling a sense of paternal protectiveness to my own father. That was very much McIndoe’s spirit. He was a father to these guys. This is a story of fathers and sons.”

With that exact same protective spirit, McIndoe would send the men below his care into East Grinstead, to stroll the town, drink in the pubs, attend events – just like other younger guys. And the folks of East Grinstead, to their immense credit, learned to welcome these disfigured males in uniform. Now it is identified as “the town that did not stare”.

Jennings’s McIndoe memorial is, as a consequence, an arrangement of two somewhat bigger than life-size figures. Seated is a airman, his burned hands clawed collectively, his scarred encounter turned to 1 side. Standing behind him, resting a reassuring hand on every single shoulder, is the figure of McIndoe.

They are framed by a stone bench. “When the nearby individuals sit on that lengthy curved seat, they comprehensive the monument,” says Jennings. “This is a tribute to Archie McIndoe and the Guinea Pigs, but it is also a tribute to the individuals of East Grinstead.”

Michael Jennings, like numerous of the Guinea Pigs, went on to outlive by far the man who had so helped him. He died in 2002, aged 82, after a lengthy submit-war profession as a instructor. He too, will live on in the memorial. Though the figure of the airman is not based on any a single guy, Martin Jennings modelled the burned hands on individuals of his father.

The result, says Montfort Bebb, would have enormously pleased her very own father, Archie McIndoe. Not that he subscribed to theories of “greatness”.

“He mentioned that greatness is just challenging work – attention to detail and a lot of hard perform. He possibly worked himself to death. But he by no means talked about his very own health. He was just devoted to medicine and patching up these poor boys.”

Go to mcindoememorial.com to make a donation

The pioneering surgeon who healed guys scarred by war, a new monument created in his honour - and the impressive twist of fate that hyperlinks them

Duchess of Cornwall turns into patron of pioneering charity which employs canines to help diagnose cancer

“I was expecting a clinical trial. It brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye, how numerous lives this could save.”

Dr Claire Guest, chief executive of Health care Detection Dogs, explained it was only fairly not too long ago that the scientific planet had pursued the potential of dogs to sniff out illnesses.

The work of the charity is now endorsed by big cancer charities this kind of as Cancer Investigation Uk.

She advised the guests invited to the demonstration: “How we missed for so numerous centuries that canines could detect illnesses in this way is maybe impressive, but maybe we weren’t watching our canines cautiously sufficient.”

Her interest in the topic sprang from a buddy who in the early 1980s went to see her GP to have a mole on her calf examined only after her dog persistently sniffed the difficulty region which was diagnosed as skin cancer.

^{Prince Charles, (R) and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are pictured in the course of a demonstration by Healthcare Detection Dogs (MDD) (Chris Jackson/ Getty)}

Dr Guest’s very own dog Daisy, one particular of the Labradors utilised in the demonstration, alerted her to a lump in her breast which proved to be cancer.

Her charity not only trains lab primarily based canines to analyse samples from sufferers suspected of getting the early stages of bladder or prostate cancer but also has all around 50 health-related support dogs, with the vast majority assisting their owners to manage their diabetes by warning them if their blood-sugar levels are also large or lower.

She stated: “The ability of canines to help with folks who are suffering from existence threatening problems is incredible.

“These canines are not only transforming people’s lives but maintaining them safe, retaining them out of the hospital and dare I say it, saving the NHS a lot of income.

“The dogs are skilled to detect the odour change, this biochemical adjust, that happens in our bodies with any condition or condition and the dogs are taught when you smell this on your proprietor warn them rapidly.”

Charles and Camilla met six-12 months-outdated Cerys Davies and her mother, Debbie, from Baldock in Hertfordshire, who have Wendy, a black Labrador who helps the youngster deal with her aggressive Variety 1 diabetes.

Mrs Davies mentioned she and her husband would mount vigils during the night, performing blood tests to make confident their daughter did not slip into a coma.

But now the dog will wake them if there is a dilemma and carry over Cerys’s healthcare kit.

Mrs Davies stated: “We have had Wendy four months and the adjust has been extraordinary. She wouldn’t depart my side prior to but now Cerys is happier and more healthy.

“Wendy alerts us about 5 to eight occasions a day and she did it the 1st night we had her, which we in no way expected.”

Duchess of Cornwall turns into patron of pioneering charity which employs canines to help diagnose cancer

Four ladies provided pioneering womb transplants impregnated via IVF

The Swedish surgical staff practicising before the uterus transplant operations at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg. Photograph: Johan Wingborg/AP

Four of nine girls given pioneering womb transplants in Sweden have now also had embryos transferred, the pioneering Swedish physician treating them has mentioned.

Dr Mats Brannstrom, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Gothenburg University, stated his crew had embarked on a programme of embryo transfer for the ladies, who have been either born with no a womb or misplaced it as a end result of cancer. All have ovaries so had been ready to create eggs that have been fertilised employing IVF.

Brannstrom predicted that 3 or four of the 9 females may possibly succeed in providing birth, which would be a planet first. Other womb transplants have taken spot in Saudi Arabia and Turkey but no recipients have but managed to have a kid. A pregnancy was accomplished in Turkey, but it failed after two months.

“We have already begun transferring embryos into 4 of the women and prepare to make attempts with the other individuals when they are ready,” mentioned Brannstrom. He would not say no matter whether any of the girls were pregnant at the moment. In a review published final week, the group mentioned that there have been “mild rejection episodes” in four females who obtained donated wombs. Two sufferers had to have the uterus eliminated since of problems.

Brannstrom’s approach is controversial because he is accepting wombs donated by living women, who are family members or buddies of his individuals. Elsewhere, wombs from dead donors have been utilised.

Dr Richard Smith, head of the United kingdom charity Womb Transplant United kingdom, which is striving to increase money to carry out transplants right here, has said that large chunks of blood vessels had to be eliminated from the donor as properly as the uterus itself, raising the dangers of the operation for the donor. In the United kingdom, there would be ethical inquiries since the operation is not a life-saving procedure, he stated.

The females will have to get medication throughout their pregnancy to make certain their physique does not reject the organ. They will also have to be watched carefully for how the womb progresses during pregnancy.

Dr Charles Kingsland, a spokesman for Britain’s Royal School of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, explained: “There are questions about how the physiological changes in the uterus will impact the mother and no matter whether the transplanted uterus will be conducive to a increasing little one.”

Brannstrom stated the transplanted wombs would be removed soon after a maximum of two pregnancies.

Four ladies provided pioneering womb transplants impregnated via IVF