A revolutionary new 'zoom' lens' has helped Elaine Wilcox restore her youthful sight. The new lens has been implanted in her eyes to correct her deteriorating vision.

55 year old Elaine from Yokshire, has been suffering with severe myopia (short sightedness) and as her sight was becoming worse, she decided to explore vision correction treatments and in particular, lens replacement surgery. Her timing was perfect as a revolutionary new eye lens was just being introduced for the first time.

The lens is the first of its kind and is set to spearhead a whole new category of vision correction lenses capable of an unprecedented level of smooth and seamless sight correction.

Elaine, who is a retired adult education teacher, had thought about having vision correction treatment but admittedly resisted taking any action as she was initially nervous of surgical procedures. She said: “Myself and my partner Ray are huge fans of the outdoors and are very active in general. We have three very energetic dogs and are out in all weathers, whether it is visiting the Dales or the Coast. It was becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy my outdoor and active lifestyle with my deteriorating vision. Even supermarket shopping was beginning to be a difficult chore! I just thought that enough is enough and it is time to do something about it which is when I found out about Mr Pande. It was coincidence that the new lens was just being introduced so I was very fortunate to benefit from such a state-of-the-art treatment.”

She had the new lens, known as the Symfony lens, surgically inserted into her eye to replace her deteriorating natural lens and restore her vision. Milind Pande, consultant ophthalmologist and medical director of Vision Surgery & Research Centre in East Yorkshire performed the procedure. He hails the new, technologically advanced lens as 'groundbreaking' and describes it as something that the field of ophthalmic vision correction has been waiting for. He said: “The Symfony lens which I implanted in Elaine's eyes, spearheads a new category of lenses capable of an unprecedented level of smooth sight correction.  We have used some excellent multifocal lenses but when having these lenses, patients have to accept trade offs of halos and glare. For the first time, the Symfony gives continuous vision with its smooth, continuous focus – it is similar to the zoom lens of a camera inside your eye – it really is incredible and the results can only be described as ground-breaking.”

Elaine concluded: “Having the treatment has been life-transforming. Because your eyes deteriorate slowly, you can forget how it used to be when you had good vision. My priorities were to be able to see whilst driving and see into the distance without wearing specs and now I can see very clearly indeed. I would definitely recommend treatment with this new lens, I wish I'd had the treatment done a long time ago.”