HappyLifestyleJournal
A new era has dawned on us as we will no longer have to turn to contact lenses if we want to change the God-given color of our eyes – from now on we are one laser surgery away from bright blue eyes. Namely, Strōma Medical has developed a laser procedure which can change the color of your eyes from brown to blue.
The chief scientific officer and chairman of Strōma Medical, Dr. Gregg Homer claims that every brown eye has the color blue underneath it. The difference between a brown eye and a blue eye is that the brown eye has a layer of pigment over the blue iris. The laser procedure that is being clinically trialed right now is completely non-invasive. Dr. Gregg Homer claims that this procedure jumpstarts a natural process in the eye so that the body, with the help of scavenger cells, discards the pigmentation from the surface of the iris.
During this procedure a computer guided low-energy laser is used to ‘destroy’ the brown pigmentation on the surface of the eye, claims Dr. Homer.
The laser has a specific frequency that passes through the clear cornea, and it becomes selectively absorbed by the brown pigment that covers the surface of the iris. And the best thing about this procedure is that it lasts for only 30 seconds, and after just a couple of weeks you have bright blue eyes.
The laser procedure still hasn’t been approved in the U.S. and clinical testing will include over 100 patients and will last for over a year. So far, the procedure was used on patients in Costa Rica and Mexico, and there are future procedures scheduled in the Philippines. Dr. Homer claims that every possible endangering factor has been examined even during the designing of the device, and he is certain that the procedure is completely safe. So far they have successfully removed the dark pigment off the iris of many clinical patients and nobody suffered from any discomfort, injury or pain.
If the procedure gets approved it is estimated that everyone who wants to undergo it will have to splurge around $5,000 USD. Some would argue that this is a pretty penny for an esthetic procedure, but at Strōma Medical they are certain that the procedure will be very popular.
However a representative of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and professor at UC Davis, Dr. Ivan R. Schwab, says that the procedure might not cost you much money-wise, but it can have a high price in terms of health risks, as the biggest threat after this kind of procedure is glaucoma. And this is a problem that might not appear right after the eye-color changing procedure, but problems may appear after 10 years.
When it comes to alternatives, there are still some risks involved. Until now, the only way to change your eye color was by going to your ophthalmologist or any other eye care professional and buying yourself contact lenses. You had to make sure that the contact lenses fit perfectly, but many people would buy them over the internet or over the counter – contact lenses bought this way would often be of poor quality and wouldn’t fit well, and at the end would cause health problems.
