‘I was thrilled with my electronic retina’
Could a microchip implant being trialled by Oxford University help to cure a rare form of blindness, asks Judy Hobson
For years Nikki Watson was unable to walk along the country lanes near her Devon home unaided or without using a cane.
In November, just six weeks after having an electronic microchip fitted in her right eye, Nikki, who has been registered blind since the age of 17, found she could walk unassisted. She will never forget the feeling. “I suddenly realised I’d left my husband, Hal, and another friend behind and was walking happily by myself, because I could make out the hedgerow alongside the road,” says Nikki, 49, from Shebbear, in North Devon.
Nikki has the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, which causes photoreceptor cells at the back of the eyes to die off, leading to blindness. Before this technique, no treatment was available for the condition, which affects one in every 3,000 people.
The disease is a genetic condition and Nikki’s older brother, Geoffrey, 59, is also affected, though it wasn’t clear at first what was causing their sight problems.
When Nikki was nine, she was taken to an optician’s and given glasses with one lens blanked out. The other lens, for reading, was very thick and had a protruding telescope that could be used for distance vision. “I wore these happily in the summer holidays, but in the first assembly back at school, I used the telescopic lens to see the hymn sheet on the wall. A boy turned around and laughed and soon everyone was laughing. I never wore them again.” At 11, she was sent to Exhall Grange in Coventry, a school for partially sighted children and those with progressive diseases. “I imagined it would be like Malory Towers, but it wasn’t. I hated every minute because it was so far from home.” Her eyesight deteriorated further and, at 17, Nikki was registered blind and learnt to use a white stick. One day she was sent for counselling in the sick bay, where doctors confirmed that she had retinitis pigmentosa. “A panel of white-coated strangers told me that I’d be blind at 24 and there was nothing anybody could do.” By then her field of vision was “like looking down a Smartie tube”. Back in Plymouth, Nikki spent three years at a Catholic girls’ school and managed to pass her English A-level. At 21, she got a job working for the Land Registry. “I had a machine that would magnify the cards of title deeds on to a television screen in front of me. It was slow going.” At work she met Hal, her future husband. Odene, her first guide dog, was guest of honour at their wedding. It was a sheer fluke that Nikki learnt about the research being carried out by Prof Robert MacLaren and his team at the Oxford Eye Hospital. “One Saturday I was listening to the Fighting Blindness charity’s Twitter feed. It said the professor was looking for people to participate in the trial. I decided to give it a go.” Last September, Nikki underwent surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital to have the microchip implanted below her retina. Containing 1,500 tiny electronic light detectors, it sends signals the optic nerve is able to pick up, helping patients regain some sight. Two days later, she was home, with plastic eye shields to wear outside and at bedtime. Four weeks later, the chip was switched on and doctors began carrying out tests.
“Every time it went on, I saw a bright flash. They had laid out objects to identify. I was asked whether I could see a dinner plate or a circular ring. I said it was a ring. When they told me I was right, I wanted to jump up and kiss the ophthalmologist.”
Arriving home, she switched on her chip and could see there was a letter on the doormat. “I went around the house switching the lights on and off. I was thrilled my brain was starting to interpret what I was seeing.”
However, a few months later, at a check-up, Nikki’s right eye looked sore. The wiring was not lying flat on her conjunctiva. She had surgery to correct the fault, but by January the wire had lifted again and the chip still wasn’t working, so in February she had it removed.
Prof MacLaren, professor of ophthalmology at Oxford University and consultant vitreoretinal surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, says this is unusual. “In the majority of patients, the electronic microchip is working very well. Nikki is the only one where this has happened and she was just unlucky. Having the chip replaced at a future date is an option for Nikki.” Nikki says: “I’m back to square one, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently. If the professor suggests I can be reimplanted, I’ll consider it. “It is amazing research and means that in future when a 17-year-old girl is told she has the disease, it won’t be as cut and dried as when I was given my diagnosis.” Prof MacLaren hopes the microchip will become available to people with the illness within three years. “Meanwhile, we’re happy to implant chips in people with retinitis pigmentosa. The trial is scientific, so we need them to be completely blind in order to know that the vision they get after implantation is from the chip. To date nine patients have been implanted, and we’re about to do another three.”