Scleral Buckle

Scleral Buckle

One of the causes leading to (partial) blindness is retinal detachment, which often is the result of a tear or hole in the retina.  The retina lines the inside of the wall of the eye and receives oxygen and nutrients from the underlying layer of the eye. When a retinal detachment occurs, the retina begins to dysfunction, and ultimately dies. If a detached retina is not treated, it can lead to total blindness. [3]

Medisse has developed the scleral buckle to repair a detached retina and to help avoid many of the post-surgical complications of the eye surgery.

Scleral buckling surgery is the most common procedure used to repair retinal detachment. In the buckling procedure one or several bands are placed around the eye in order to indent the outside of the eye towards the detached retina. Current devices are permanent implants, even though complete healing is generally achieved within a few weeks. To avoid some serious post-surgical complications such as sliding forward, or, in children whose eyeballs are still growing, removal, Medisse’s PTMC scleral buckle provides a powerful and innovative solution. It is programmed to resorb after the retina has healed and thus avoid any post-surgical complications (see Illustration). Pre-clinical in-vivo trials have been very encouraging and further work is continuing to bring the scleral buckle to the clinical stage.

   [3]    Wikipedia. Retinal Attachment. Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. [Online] 22 04 2011. [Cited: 08 05 2011.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_detachment.