Second Sight Medical Retinal Prosthesis Breaks Ground in Italy

Second Sight Medical Products Inc., which makes implantable visual prosthetics to provide functional vision to blind patients, today announced that two newly approved centers in Italy, located in Camposampiero and Florence, have successfully completed their first commercial implants of the Argus II retinal prosthesis system in patients with outer retinal degeneration.

“We are thrilled to see the expanded availability of Argus II in Italy,” stated Robert Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Second Sight. “By offering Argus II in Italy, we are able to provide patients with outer retinal degeneration the chance to lead more independent lives, which can be life changing for these patients.”

Outer retinal degeneration is the deterioration of the outer layer of the retina caused by progressive death of the cells in this region of the retina. An important type of outer retinal degeneration is retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which is a rare, hereditary disease that causes a progressive degeneration of the light-sensitive cells of the retina, leading to significant visual impairment and ultimately can lead to blindness. There are an estimated 2,200 people in Italy, and 167,000 persons across Europe with RP in total.

To date, the Argus II has been implanted in more than 100 individuals worldwide, and is the first approved retinal prosthesis in the world. Currently, the treatment is offered at approved centers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. The system induces visual perception in blind individuals by providing electrical pulses to stimulate the retina’s remaining cells, resulting in a perception of light patterns in the brain. The Argus II implant can positively impact a blind person’s ability to conduct routine daily activities, such as recognizing shapes or large objects, locating people, identifying the location of doorways, and following lines or edges. Ultimately, this is meant to allow Argus II users to live their daily lives with more confidence.

Second Sight’s Argus II System provides electrical stimulation that bypasses the defunct retinal cells and stimulates remaining viable cells inducing visual perception in individuals with severe to profound retinitis pigmentosa. The Argus II works by converting images captured by a miniature video camera mounted on the patient’s glasses into a series of small electrical pulses, which are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes implanted on the surface of the retina. These pulses are intended to stimulate the retina’s remaining cells, resulting in the perception of patterns of light in the brain. The patient then learns to interpret these visual patterns, thereby regaining some visual function. The system is controlled by software and is upgradeable, which may provide improved performance as new algorithms are developed and tested.