HelpMeSee Celebrates World Sight Day By Successfully Testing Leading Edge Virtual Cataract Eye Surgery Simulator

"The eye surgery simulator definitely represents a new and viable way to train future surgeons. More than that, I see it as a huge leap forward in terms of ethics as finally surgeons can train without exposing patients. In essence, the eye surgery simulator brings virtual reality to students," said Dr. Andre. "They can now practice and repeat the procedure or a specific step of it as many times as required until perfect. Virtual reality has the power to essentially provide the advantages of reality as the eye is there, as we need it, no patient is endangered. This to me represents a great way to train more surgeons to operate on cataract patients."

In the hands of a skilled specialist, the MSICS procedure is quick and extremely cost effective with excellent post-operative results comparable to more costly procedures.  In less than 2 years, through the financial support of HelpMeSee donors, 93 partner surgeons have performed more than 70,000 cataract surgeries and are on track to complete 100,000 through 2013.  

James Ueltschi, Chairman and co-founder of HelpMeSee, remarked, "We proved at FlightSafety International that simulators can be used to train thousands of pilots every year. We strongly believe that this principle can apply to cataract specialists as well. We are very confident we can solve the problem of global blindness due to cataracts through this approach."

Seán Gartland, President, Moog Industrial Group commented: "This project is a great opportunity to combine HelpMeSee and Moog's extensive and highly complementary expertise. We bring our strong engineering capability to provide simulator systems and high level haptic force feedback. Our long-term experience and success in providing systems for flight simulators has enabled unsurpassed levels of performance, fidelity and reliability. More recently, our experience in developing the Simodont Dental Trainer confirmed the increasingly key role that haptics can play in medical simulation and we are excited to support efforts that help grow this industry. We are proud to support the noble cause underlying the HelpMeSee Campaign."

About Moog 
Moog Inc. is a worldwide designer, manufacturer and integrator of precision control components and systems. Moog Industrial Group designs and manufactures high performance motion control solutions combining electric, hydraulic, and hybrid technologies with expert consultative support in a range of applications in energy, industrial automation, simulation and test. We help performance-driven companies design and develop their next-generation equipment. Moog's Industrial Group, with fiscal year 2012 sales of USD 634 million and over 40 locations worldwide, is part of Moog Inc. (NYSE:MOG.A and MOG.B), which has sales of USD 2.47 billion. For more information please visit www.moog.com/industrial.

About HelpMeSee
HelpMeSee (www.HelpMeSee.org) is a not-for-profit global campaign to eliminate cataract blindness endemic in developing countries.  HelpMeSee intends to make the sight-restoring surgery available to millions of poor through financial support and the training of thousands of highly skilled MSICS specialists recruited from within their communities. HelpMeSee is pioneering a virtual reality surgical simulator and training program to be implemented worldwide, adapted from extensive experience in simulator based aviation training.

Watch a short video about the MSICS (manual small incision cataract surgery) virtual reality surgical training simulator here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL5WB2pxpRw

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SOURCE HelpMeSee