The program has provided students the opportunity to meet experienced low vision rehabilitation practitioners and learn more about preparing for a future in low vision rehabilitation.

Student Educational Awareness Program
American Optometric Association
04/28/08

The AOA Low Vision Rehabilitation Section (LVRS) Student Educational Awareness Program announced its third round of school visits for the 2008-2009 program year.

Sponsored by Optelec and ShopLowVision.com, the program has connected with students at every optometric school in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada since its inception in 2004.

“One of the most rewarding and inspirational educational programs developed by the Low Vision Rehabilitation Section of the AOA is the Student Educational Awareness Program,” said Bruce Rosenthal, O.D., chair of the LVRS Council. “Students learn about some of the exciting developments that are taking place in low vision as well as learning more about some of the unique opportunities that are available. These settings include private practice, university and hospital settings, the new VA opportunities, and internships and residencies.”

The two-and-a-half-hour program includes a reception involving participants, students, and host faculty members, followed by a presentation on low vision rehabilitation awareness, including motivational insights and practice management considerations.

The evening concludes with an opportunity for students to ask questions and the presentation of adaptive technology to the host school, generously donated by Optelec and ShopLowVision.com.

“ShopLowVision.com is thrilled to be sponsoring the Low Vision Rehabilitation Section Student Educational Awareness Program,” said Lynne Noon, O.D., president of LowVision.com. “By visiting all optometry schools over the next two years, we hope to encourage new doctors to incorporate low vision rehabilitation into their practices. Low vision rehabilitation is not only rewarding, it can help a new practice succeed financially. At present, less than 15 percent of visually impaired patients receive low vision services, so there is an abundance of patients in need of care.”

The program has provided students the opportunity to meet experienced low vision rehabilitation practitioners and learn more about preparing for a future in low vision rehabilitation.

All participating students are given the opportunity to sign up for a free one-year membership in the LVRS.

The program also provides information about the AOA LVRS and supports low vision rehabilitation clinics at the host school.

“The students learn about the benefits of joining as a student and as well as eventually working with their state associations in the AOA Low Vision Rehabilitation Section,” said Dr. Rosenthal. “It is a great opportunity to learn how much enjoyment, as well as satisfaction, low vision can bring to one’s practice in the profession of optometry.”

For more information about the Student Educational Awareness Program, contact LVRS Manager Stephanie Brown at sdbrown@aoa.org.

New World Sports’ Joe Bagley and his girlfriend ride tandem.

Fort Collins Now
By Andra Coberly
4/3/08

For those with vision impairments, the most difficult aspect of losing sight is often losing independence. And sometimes that lack of autonomy is personified in matters of transportation: If you can’t drive or you can’t get someplace on your own, it seems like you can’t do much.

That thought can be depressing and make those with low or no vision isolate themselves in their homes and avoid physical activity.

“People with low vision often become more sedentary because we don’t have transportation. Running becomes more difficult when you have to scan at all times and you’re dealing with glare and it’s difficult to see obstacles in your path,” said Denny Bettenhausen, who is the executive director of Ensight Skills Center, a Fort Collins nonprofit that caters to those with low vision or blindness. She also has macular degeneration, a degenerative eye disease that results in the partial loss of vision, mainly in the center of the eye.

“I’ve been hit twice and once my bike was totaled. It can be scary out there when you can’t see,” Bettenhausen said.

For the local blind and low vision community, a new partnership between Bettenhausen’s Ensight Skills Center and New World Sports, a local tour guide and mountain bike instruction service, will make traversing the city via bicycle a lot less intimidating and a lot more safe.

New World Sports founder Joe Bagley was recently inspired by his own grandfather, who also has macular degeneration, after the 85-year-old lost his driver’s license. Bagley, a competitive mountain biker who started New World Sports last year, encouraged his grandpa to join him for a tandem bicycle ride.

“He was really skeptical that he wouldn’t be able to ride. But it opened a new freedom that he had lost when he lost his driver’s license,” said Bagley, who has been riding tandem since he was little and recently did a tandem trip from Colorado to South Dakota with his girlfriend.

Inspired by his grandfather’s excitement, Bagley began brainstorming about helping the larger low vision population. He took his idea—bringing together sighted and low vision riders for monthly two-hour tandem bike rides—to Ensight and created the Co-Pilots Tandem Bike Program.

“It really gives us an opportunity to exercise and have more freedom. It opens up a whole new world,” Bettenhausen said. “Speaking for myself, I felt like maybe this isn’t something I ever thought I would be able to do again.”

The first Co-Pilots ride will take place on April 7 and then once a month after that. Low vision riders can either be partnered with a sighted rider, who will go through training in how to properly captain a tandem bicycle, or they can ride as individuals.

“For some of them, they have bicycle experience but no tools or someone to help them,” Bagley said. “They are limited, but they need an outlet for exercise. There are a huge number of blind and disabled people who battle obesity.”

New World Sports is currently seeking captains as well as people to donate tandem bikes. Ensight has been encouraging its clients to hit the road for the monthly rides. With barriers that often discourage low vision or blind people from hoping on a bike removed, both Bagley and Bettenhausen hope people of all abilities will join them; especially beginners who may not be active or those who shut themselves in doors.

“I just feel like it’s an opportunity for the visually impaired community to get out and exercise,” Bettenhausen said. “We tend to be more isolated and this allows us to have a group activity to take part in.”

The drug is the first of its type to undergo a clinical trial for macular degeneration. Other companies are developing similar drugs but aren’t in trials yet.

Potentia Pharmaceuticals, a young Louisville drug-development company, has completed a $12 million round of fundraising to help it move its potentially groundbreaking vision drug through clinical trials.

The investment round was led by HealthCare Ventures, a $1.6 billion venture-capital firm with a 22-year record of spotting promising life-sciences companies and bringing their drugs to the marketplace.

The involvement of the East Coast firm could help Potentia reach a deal with a large pharmaceutical company to commercialize its drug for macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness.

The $12 million is likely the largest single fund raising round ever for a Louisville life-sciences company, said Steve Gailar, chief executive officer of MetaCyte Business Lab, Louisville’s program to help such companies get started.

“That’s a tremendous, tremendous success for Potentia, and frankly that’s going to be a great success for our community,” he said.

Gailar said HealthCare Ventures’ involvement could lead it or other firms to invest in other life-sciences companies here.

Growing life-sciences businesses is a key Louisville economic development goal, and the University of Louisville is developing a downtown research park for them. Potentia’s offices are in the park.

Founded in 2001 by Harvard-trained scientists, Potentia moved in 2003 to Louisville, where co-founder Cedric Francois had done research at U of L. The company explored several fields before settling on macular degeneration.

Potentia has raised $23 million, the bulk from investors outside Louisville, said Francois, its CEO.

They include MASA Life Science Ventures, a venture-capital fund based in Washington, D.C., and Japan, which made a sizable investment in the latest round, Potentia said.

Francois said the latest investment round will enable the company, which has 12 employees, to hire up to five more to help with the next phase of an ongoing clinical trial of Potentia’s drug.

The drug could become the first to win approval for treating the most common form of macular degeneration. It is about five years away from going on sale.

More than 10 million Americans have age-related macular degeneration, caused by the deterioration of the central retina. About 15 percent have the advanced “wet” form of the disease in which blood vessels grow behind the retina and leak, obscuring vision.

There are treatments for that form. But no drugs have been approved for the more prevalent “dry” form.

If Potentia’s drug becomes the first, it could be “a blockbuster drug opportunity,” Francois said.

The company is developing a compound discovered at the University of Pennsylvania called POT-4. Potentia signed a licensing deal with the university in 2006.

The compound sprang from recent discoveries that an immune-system response to bacteria or viruses, if unchecked, might harm eye cells. POT-4 binds tightly to a protein involved in that response, keeping damage from occurring.

That means it might be used in patients with the early “dry” form to block the disease’s progress, Potentia says.

If successful, “it’s going to be huge movement forward … to be able to treat patients with these diseases, for which we have no treatment at this time,” said Dr. Shalesh Kaushal of the University of Florida. He is director of vitreoretinal services at the university, one of six sites where a trial of Potentia’s drug is under way.

The drug is the first of its type to undergo a clinical trial for macular degeneration. Other companies are developing similar drugs but aren’t in trials yet.

The Phase I trial is designed to prove the drug is safe. A larger Phase II trial to determine effectiveness is expected to start around year’s end, Francois said.

The results could determine whether a large pharmaceutical company will want to strike a deal. Francois said Potentia has been in talks with several.

If trial results continue to be strong, Potentia will have “many very attractive opportunities,” said Douglas Onsi, a partner in HealthCare Ventures.

HealthCare Ventures, based in Princeton, N.J., and Cambridge, Mass., has invested in more than 80 early-stage life-science companies. More than half grew into publicly traded firms or were bought by large drug companies. They include MedImmune, maker of flu-vaccine spray FluMist.

Onsi said HealthCare Ventures was attracted by Potentia’s speed in bringing to trial what could be a “first-in-class” drug, but also by the “teamwork and camaraderie” of its team.

“They clearly are the brightest young scientists in the city,” said Dr. Donald Miller, director of U of L’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center, who recruited Potentia to Louisville.

Francois said the company’s East Coast investors now agree it was a good decision to move to Louisville, where there are fewer biotech start-ups competing for dollars and attention.

In Louisville, the company has gotten support and encouragement from MetaCyte, U of L and metro government. “You want to call the mayor, you can call him,” Francois said. “That doesn’t happen in Boston.”

We hope that our contribution, and the contributions of dedicated surgeons across the country, makes a difference in the lives of people in need.

In just 100 minutes on Wednesday, April 9, the lives of 100 low-income people in cities and towns across the United States will be changed forever, as their failing eyesight goes from murky to new-found clarity at all distances with crystalens® cataract-lens implants, free of charge.

Not only can this unique program - Changing 100 Lives in 100 Minutes - dramatically improve patients’ eyesight, but many patients may never need eyeglasses again.

Bausch & Lomb, which manufactures the innovative crystalens intraocular lens (IOL) for cataracts, will donate 100 pairs of these lenses not generally covered by private insurance or Medicare. From coast to coast, 100 participating ophthalmologists will perform crystalens IOL implantation surgeries simultaneously over the course of an hour and 40 minutes at no additional charge.

This national effort will begin promptly next Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) with the implantation of the 100,000th crystalens IOL. The crystalens IOL is the only intraocular lens that uses eye muscles to focus in much the same way as the eye’s natural lens, and is designed to provide clear vision at all distances - near, intermediate and far.

The 100,000th crystalens IOL surgery will be performed by Dr. James P. Gills, founder of St. Luke’s Cataract & Laser Institute in Tarpon Springs, Fla.

The crystalens IOL design is based on the human eye and uses the eye muscle to focus on objects at all distances. It is the only lens to use the eye’s natural focusing ability and is the first and only such lens to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Few crystalens IOL patients have experienced problems with night vision, halos or glare.

“We couldn’t think of a better way to show our appreciation for the success of the cyrstalens IOL than to share the gift of sight with people who struggle with cataracts,” said Andy Corley, president, U.S. Surgical, Bausch & Lomb. “We hope that our contribution, and the contributions of dedicated surgeons across the country, makes a difference in the lives of people in need.”

For more details about the crystalens IOL Changing 100 Lives in 100 Minutes program, visit http://www.crystalens.com.

Bausch & Lomb is the eye health company dedicated to perfecting vision and enhancing life for consumers around the world. Its core businesses include contact lenses and lens care products, and ophthalmic surgical and pharmaceutical products. The Bausch & Lomb name is one of the best known and most respected healthcare brands in the world. Founded in 1853, the Company is headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., and employs approximately 13,000 people worldwide. Its products are available in more than 100 countries.

Leo E. Fiyalko, 92, is kissed by his sister, Naida Santo, 90, after a recognition ceremony for his Jan. 10 feat at Cove Cay in Clearwater last Thursday.

Associated Press
NBC Sports
02/01/08

Fiyalko uses five iron to make ace at 110 yards at Florida country club.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - A hole-in-one is rare on the golf course, but what are the odds of a blind golfer sinking one?

Leo Fiyalko couldn’t see it, but his golf buddies did — a hole-in-one on the fifth hole at the Cove Cay Country Club.

Fiyalko is 92 and has macular degeneration. He’s been golfing for 60 years, but his 110-yard shot with a five iron on Jan. 10 was his first hole-in-one.

“I was just trying to put the ball on the green,” Fiyalko said.

Fiyalko tees off every Thursday with a group of golfers ranging in age from 70 to 90-plus. He used to have a seven handicap, but now he needs help lining up his shots and finding his golf balls because he only has peripheral vision in his right eye.

Jean Gehring was playing in his foursome and watched Fiyalko’s swing.

“I could tell it went on the green, (but) when we got up there I didn’t see it. I looked in the hole and there it was,” Gehring said.

Gehring said Fiyalko brushed off the feat, and had to be prodded to tell his wife about it at the end of the round.

Fiyalko’s friends at the country club presented him with a plaque last week to commemorate the feat.

Golf Digest has calculated the odds of making a hole in one at 1 in 13,000 for the “average golfer.”

CHARLIE COLLINS, who was diagnosed as a child with juvenile macular degeneration, owns Vision Dynamics, a one-stop shop in Cheshire for people with impaired vision. The screen in the background is a viewer that magnifies the type from newspapers, magazines and books to help people read them.

Hartford Curant
By JANICE PODSAD
1/30/08

In 1997, brimming with enthusiasm and a ready-made (if small) customer base, Charlie Collins decided to launch his own business in Cheshire — a store that sold optical magnifiers and visual aids for those with low vision.

Collins, his brother and two of his four sisters had been diagnosed as children with juvenile macular degeneration, a genetic disorder that impairs vision. To read, they needed magnifiers and optical scanners. They needed talking clocks and talking telephones. For fun, they needed large-print playing cards and tactile chess sets.

“I knew I had a few customers — my family,” Collins said. Just one problem: “I also knew they would want a discount.”

Collins, then 29, wrote a business plan, secured a $105,000 business loan from AT&T Capital Corp., and with his father’s help, transformed a former dance studio at 470 W. Main St., into a brightly lit 800-square-foot showroom called Vision Dynamics.

In 10 years, the company has become a profitable, one-stop shop for people with impaired vision, as well as a contract provider for several state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said Collins, now 40.

What’s on the shelves or online at www.visiondynamics.com? Everything from a 65-cent signature guide to a pair of magnifying toenail clippers for $9.95 to document magnifiers priced in the thousands.

The store also carries $139.95 telescopic glasses “perfect for viewing TV,” $99 ZoomText keyboards “for anyone who struggles to see the lettering on their keyboard,” and talking calculators, talking watches, even an upbeat, talking scale. “You’ve gained two pounds — have a nice day,” Collins said, parodying its patter.

Since 1997, Vision Dynamics has tripled its square footage, adding training and rehabilitation rooms and an office for a visiting optometrist.

The store employs five visually impaired people and one playful guide dog, 2-year-old Simon, who is learning not to chew on the carpet. Simon accompanies Nancy Hays, who has been blind since birth, to work.

“This is a full-service company, pretty much owned and operated by a bunch of people who can’t see a damn thing,” Collins said.

On a recent morning, Hays was demonstrating a $2,500 optical scanner to a teenage customer. The scanner, a small, hand-held device, takes a digital snapshot of text and then reads it aloud.

“For a blind person like myself who has absolutely no vision, this is great,” Hays told him. “I can take it to the store and read the labels on soup cans.”

Collins hired Hays, a former customer, six months ago.

“She was sitting at home,” Collins said. “Now she’s here three days a week. Guess what? she’s awesome.”

“And Marge — at the front desk — she was one of my customers. She’d been at home for two years when I asked her to come work for me. The first thing she told me was, ‘I can’t.’ But here she is. I could see these people had a lot to offer.”

Collins was not always comfortable with his failing eyesight, or himself.

“I was diagnosed with macular degeneration when I was 9. By seventh grade, I couldn’t see faces. I was legally blind.”

As his vision dimmed, so did his spirits.

“All I knew was that I could never be a jet fighter pilot or a police officer or a firefighter. I felt like my life was over,” he said. “I had a state adviser who would have helped, but I was angry. I turned him away.

“I never told anyone how I felt. But every day I told myself I was a loser. It wasn’t my eyesight that was bad; it was myself.

“By high school, my feeling was I would rather be dead.”

After barely graduating from high school, Collins worked at odd jobs for several years, earning enough to buy a small dirt bike that he rode through the woods. “You can’t hurt trees,” he said.

“I had no goals, no vision, no future.”

When he needed a motorcycle part, the 22-year-old would stop in at Willow’s Motor Sports in Cheshire.

“One day, one of the co-owners asked me if I would like to sell motorcycles,” Collins said. “All I could think was why would he ever ask a dumb, blind guy like me a question like that?”

Collins said he would think it over. The next morning, after a fitful night, he returned to the dealership.

“I had a 90-day trial,” Collins said. “I read for the first time in years. I got a video magnifier. I got a large-print computer. I asked for help. I got honest.”

Sales took off, said Jim Tabor, the co-owner of Willow’s who hired Collins.

“Charlie was a good salesperson,” Tabor said. “I knew he had problems with his vision, but I figured he could do the job. I just liked his personality. It’s more about enthusiasm.”

Three years later, Collins was promoted to vice president of Willow’s.

“I had it all the time. I just didn’t know how to tap into my gifts,” Collins said.

After a few years, however, he realized something was missing.

“I knew I needed to move on,” he said. “I didn’t want to sell motorcycles forever. I took a year off — that year, I worked on Charlie. That’s when I decided to open a store that sells magnifiers.”

A month ago, Collins expanded the store to accommodate a special fitting room for customers in need of special lenses. Once a week, Randolph Kinkade, a Litchfield-based optometrist, sees patients there.

“I design special telescope glasses and high-power lenses that aren’t seen in traditional doctors’ offices,” Kinkade said.

“The sales staff here, they’re all visually impaired,” Kinkade said. “When people come in and they’ve lost sight, there’s an instant bond — ‘Wow, you have it too!’”

Collins and Kinkade have known each other for 10 years.

“We see many of the same people,” Kinkade said. “If I can’t help them with glasses, I know he can help them with his reading machines.”