Reported February 16, 2004

Driving Glasses

BOSTON (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Low vision is vision that cannot be corrected with regular glasses or contact lenses. It affects millions and can be caused by a number of different diseases. For most people, low vision means they can’t get a driver’s license or do daily activities like reading the newspaper. Now an advance lets people with low vision get their lives -- and their eyes -- back.

When it’s story time with her two sons, Lauren Holt can see all she needs to see. But for years, Holt couldn’t drive her sons where they needed to go. Her eye problems make it impossible, even with glasses, to get her vision to 20/40, the vision needed to drive legally. “I used to have to do Internet shopping, or my husband would go on Sundays and get the groceries, or I could walk to the market, but I couldn’t get many things,” she tells Ivanhoe.

Now Holt has a new lease on life, thanks to a set of telescopic glasses. She says, “99.9 percent of the time when I drive, I just look through the carrier lenses themselves, and then I just use the scope when I’m driving to see road signs.”

Doctors say these glasses can help people with low vision drive legally. “Spotting the traffic light from a large enough distance -- for tasks like this, they need sharper vision,” says Eli Peli, O.D., a vision researcher at Harvard Medical School/Schepens Eye Institute in Boston.

Still, the glasses have one major problem. Dr. Peli says, “If you’re looking at a road sign, then it blocks part of the road view.” That’s why he is already developing the next level of telescopic lens. “Rather than blocking the view, it will move that view of the magnified telescope up towards the sky,” he says. Additionally, he says telescopic lenses in the future will embed the telescope into the regular.

For Holt, the current version has given her a freedom she never had. She says, “It was scary, and it was liberating, and it was exciting at the same time.”

Now, there’s nothing to stop her from going where she needs to.

The glasses Holt uses are currently available and cost between $1,000 and $2,000. The glasses only allow her to drive during daylight hours. Dr. Peli expects the new and more advanced version of the glasses to be ready in about five years.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Rich Godfrey
Volunteer Patient Liaison
Schepens Eye Research Institute
20 Staniford Street
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 912-2569