A tiny wireless retinal implant has helped restore central vision in people with advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to results published in the New England Journal of Medicine . Advanced atrophic AMD, also called geographic atrophy (GA), is the most common cause of permanent blindness in older adults and affects more than 5 million people worldwide. The international, multi-center clinical trial was co-led by José-Alain Sahel, M.D., director of the UPMC Vision Institute; Daniel Palanker, Ph.D., professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University; and Frank Holz, M.D., professor of ophthalmology at the University of Bonn, Germany. Clinical Trial Shows Significant Vision Gains Among the 32 participants who completed one year of follow-up, 26 (81%) experienced meaningful improvements in visual acuity. In addition, 27 participants (84%) said they were using the artificial vision provided by the device at home to read numbers or words.…