NEW YORK -- It's an eye condition no one can escape from. After age 40, our eyes start to have trouble focusing close up on words in books, newspapers, and other tiny objects.
Some doctors say an experimental eye surgery could be the fountain of youth for our eyes.
Marla Huskey works magic in the kitchen.
"With a large family, we don't go out to eat much," she said.
She found that as she gets older, she finds herself doing less chopping in the kitchen and more straining.
"Anytime I got ready to cook, the glasses went on," she said.
An experimental procedure could turn back the clock for aging eyes.
"After age 40, every year, the distance that we can read things clearly begins to recede from us," said Dr. Ming Wang, PhD, ophthalmologist at the Wang Vision Cataract & LASIK Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
As we age, the lens inside our eyeball grows, but the eyeball doesn't.
Tighter quarters around the lens make it harder to focus.
In a new procedure, surgeons implant four curved plastic spacers, the size of a grain of rice, within the wall of the eyeball, giving the lens space to change shape and focus.
Molly Stewart had the surgery one week ago. It improved her vision from 20-100 to 20-40.
"I can already tell a difference when they're doing the eye tests on me, when I can read below the average line," Stewart said.
Dr. Ming Wang says the surgery takes 15 to 20 years off the eye. Marla's vision also improved.
"Oh it's just fun to think I can see as good as I could when I was in my mid-20s," Huskey said.
Now she's back focusing on more important things than finding her glasses.
To qualify for the Scleral spacing procedure, patients must be 50 to 60 years old with no prior eye surgeries and good vision aside from reading glasses.
Only three centers in the U.S. are performing the experimental surgery, in New York, Chicago, and Nashville.
If the patient doesn't like the outcome, the surgery can be reversed.
For more information:
Refocus Group - Innovative Surgical Treatments for Human Vision Disorders
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