Regardless of the context, simply pairing the nouns “eye” and “laser” within a single sentence is enough to send a thousand shivers down my spine much à la scratching a chalkboard. My eyes are sensitive and I can’t even bear to dribble a single eye drop, let alone receive laser eye surgery, which I fortunately don’t need. Other souls, let’s just say, are braver and willing to go as far as to change the color of their iris with laser.
A new technique pioneered by California’s Stroma Medical institution has devised a method of permanently changing the color of one’s iris from blue to brown by eliminating the brown melanin in the exterior of the iris. Technically speaking, the color of one’s iris is not determined by the presence of multi-colored pigments, but rather by the amount of melanin that an individual is genetically predisposed to possess. The melanin in the eye is the same type of pigment that affects the color of our hair and skin, where a higher quantity results in a darker pigment.
Because blue-eyed individuals possess an abundance of melanin in their stroma, the front layer of the eye, a disproportionate amount of blue wavelength visible light is reflected back to the viewer. By contrast, naturally dark eyed folks absorb a lesser amount of light, reflecting very little back to the viewer. Thus, one only need remove the layer of melanin from the surface of the iris to change the color of the eye. “The only difference between a brown eye and a blue eye is this very thin layer of pigment on the surface,” explained Dr. Gregg Homer, Stroma Medical’s chairman.
“If you take that pigment away, then the light can enter the stroma—the little fibers that look like bicycle spokes in a light eye—and when the light scatters it only reflects back the shortest wavelengths and that’s the blue end of the spectrum,” he adds.
Although the process takes a mere 20 seconds, it’ll set you back $5,000. Results are not immediately apparent, as the body needs a few weeks to remove the dead pigment layer. The procedure has yet to receive approval in the United States, but is available in other countries with 37 post-op patients cited in Mexico and Costa Rica.
But is it safe? Ophthalmologists remain skeptical suggesting that the dead pigment run the risk of coagulating within the eye and clogging up the normal drainage channels, potentially building up pressure within the eye that may cause patients to develop glaucoma. Dr. Homer refutes these risks, stating that the released particles are far too fine to develop glaucoma, and if complications were to arise, they’d be easily resolved.
When speaking to CNN, Dr. Saj Khan, an ophthalmologist at the London Eye Hospital, states that the “theory has some sense to it, but without seeing long-term outcomes and without seeing patients that have been treated in this way I wouldn't commit myself to it.”
We’ll know more about the long term risks by observing the initial pioneers. For the rest, they’ll just have to settle for contacts lenses if eye color is that important to them.
Source: iflscience via CNN
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