Blind woman fitted with 'bionic eye' sees for the first time

Rhian Lewis, 49, has been blind for years until she was recently fitted with a ‘bionic eye’ that partially restored her vision.

Now, the mother of two speaks out about her joy of being able to read the time on a clock for the first time.

“Honest to God, that felt like Christmas Day,” Lewis told BBC.

Since she was five-years-old, Lewis has suffered from retinitis pigmentosa - an inherited condition causing gradual blindness, The Guardian reports. Around 16 years ago, she became completely blind in her right eye and had lost most of her vision in her left eye.

“The problem with having no sight is that you also lose your confidence because you lose your mobility,” Lewis told The Guardian. “It’s simple things like shopping, clothes shopping, you don’t know what you look like.”

Last year, Lewis underwent surgery at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital in the U.K., where a team of surgeons implanted a tiny electronic chip at the back of her right eye’s retina to help her see, BBC reports.

In her follow-up tests, Lewis would look at a large cardboard clock to see if the implant worked and was over-joyed when she managed to recognize it was three o’clock.

German firm Retina Implant AG made the ‘bionic eye’ and it works by replacing the light-sensitive retinal cells in the eye, BBC reports.

The device is connected to a tiny computer underneath the skin behind the ear, sending signals to the optic nerve and then to the brain. From the outside, it looks similar to a hearing aid.

After the device was switched on, Lewis told The Guardian: “All of a sudden within seconds there was like this flashing in my eye, which has seen nothing for over 16 years, so it was like, oh my god, wow!”

The surgical team hopes the ‘bionic eye’ will be applied to other eye diseases in the near future, BBC reports.

“This groundbreaking research to create the world’s most advanced bionic eye highlights the crucial role of the NHS as a test bed for 21st century medicine,” George Freeman, the minister for life sciences, told The Guardian.