A new form of cosmetic surgery is offering patients the chance to change their eye colour by using a laser.
Developed by an investor in California, the procedure takes just 20 seconds and involves shining a laser into the patients eyes to remove the pigment.
Gregg Homer, founder of Stroma Medical in Laguna Beach California, told the New York Daily News that the treatment has already been tested on 12 volunteers in Mexico. All of them previously had darker brown eyes, but the treatment gave them blue eyes.
This is possible because eyes are in fact all blue underneath and the variations in colour are just pigment that the laser can remove.
Citing a poll of 2,000 patients, Mr Homer found that 17.5 per cent would seek the treatment. He remarked: “People like the depth of a light eye. Eyes are the windows to the soul and a light eye is like an open window.”
However, the change effected by the procedure is not instant and, in fact, patients are most likely to see their eyes turn darker in the weeks following the cosmetic treatment. This is due to the fact that the laser is only igniting a process within the eye itself, which the body then needs time to complete.
But after about four weeks, patients should have two bright blue eyes. The effect of this needs to be carefully considered before the treatment begins because there is as yet no way of reversing the colour change.
There are several thousands of requests for the treatment but at the moment safety tests are paramount so the procedure will not be available for about three years in the US and around 18 months in Europe and elsewhere.
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