The first 3D eyes fitted to humans: Glitter like real eyes

The surgery on November 25 helped the 47-year-old man in the UK get the eye he wanted. He also became the first person in the world to be fitted with a 3D printed prosthetic eye.

Steve Verze, a 47-year-old engineer, living in Hackney county, east London (England), became the first person in the world to be fitted with 3D printed eyes after an hour-long surgery on November 25, according to reports. CNN station.

A happy smile appeared on the man's lips after many years of sadness because of his body defect. It's hard to tell that his left eye is a fake eye

Steve had a disease many years ago that left one of his left eye functional. Every time he looked in the mirror, Steve felt sad because of it. After a period of waiting, undergoing many intensive examinations, he received a prosthetic eye transplant at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

The surgery went well. It's worth mentioning that the first fully digitally printed Verze prosthetic eye created for the patient with "clearer definition and more realistic pupil depth" than other alternatives.

Prosthetic eyes are not a new product, with millions of people around the world using them. But other prosthetic eyes consist only of a hand-drawn iris or a rudimentary method of printing on a small plane, which is then inserted into the eye socket, without creating true depth. The longer you use it, the easier it is to detect that the fake eye is… fake. The new product overcomes that shortcoming.

Not only that, the new eye procedure also causes less side effects. In the past, when performing eye surgery, doctors would take a mold from the patient's real eye socket, which was time consuming, laborious, and could cause infection or pain for the patient. In the new technology, the artificial eye is 3D printed. That is, the patient's eye socket is digitally scanned to create detailed images.

For patients who still have one normally functioning eye like Steve Verze, that real eye is also scanned to make sure both eyes look "real" the same.

The 3D image of Steve's eye socket was then sent to Germany for printing before being shipped back to the UK. Finally, it will be finished and polished by an ophthalmologist at Moorfields Hospital before fitting Steve.

This whole process takes only 2-3 weeks compared to almost 2 months if done the traditional way before.

In an interview with the media after the surgery, Steve Verze shared the joy of being fitted with a new eye: "It looks great and especially it is based on 3D digital printing technology. It's amazing! It looks amazing! it's real!".

Steve's successful surgery made not only himself happy but also brought hope to millions of other people with vision loss around the world. The Moorfields Eye Hospital side said that the medical team here is conducting more new studies, overcoming the smallest limitations of this technology to make it more widely available.