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Biotech / Medical : SNRS- Sunrise Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aroundight who wrote (2621)	7/7/1999 3:54:00 PM
From: Joe	Respond to of 4140

David, I don't know the breakdown of the numbers. I looked at the Framingham study a long time ago and don't recall, but remember that there are more hyperopes than myopes. I agree that it is an easy decision for a hyperope but not and emmatrope with presbiopia. But remember anyone needing readers under the age of 43 to 45 is a hyperope. Correction of presbyopia is done by making one eye myopic. This is called monovision and is currently the only way of treating presbyopia by any method, be it LTK, LASIK, PRK, RK, corneal implants, or contact lenses. Actually there is a contact lens that is an aspheric lens that is multi-focal. With that type of correction, both the near image and the distant image is brought to focus on the retina and the brain sorts the two out. When you want to see the distant image, you can see it. When you want to see the near image, you can see it. There is an interesting phenomena experienced by many people treated with LTK, myself included. The first couple of weeks after treatment, you are able to read quite well and see distance very well. I think what happens is that the way the curvature of the cornea is changed with LTK in a way such that the eye is made initially aspheric and is multifocal. Unfortunately the effect does not last. It is conceivable that a treatment could be developed with LTK to give us this kind of correction, but it is a ways off. The first company that will be able to do it will be BEAM. The laser system they acquired from ATCI has a capability called Custom Cornea that should make it possible to make an aspheric cornea. But that will take time. I do not believe they have done animal studies yet. They will have to go through human clinical trials and it will probably be several years off before it is approved. The other question is will this kind of vision be acceptable. The contact lens that does this multifocal thing is called Unilens. It has been around a long time and has never taken off. We may find that this means of treatment is not acceptable to patients. BTW, we are looking at a great close. This is a William O'Neal winner in the making - 52-week high, on an all time volume high. On Level II, it looks like a close above 16 on over 4.5M shares. Regards, Joe