Jennifer Mathews: This is what lazy eye looks like. One eye is much weaker than the other.
Dr. Kenneth Wright: So the brain is real smart. It just shuts down that eye. The good eye sort of just takes over.
Jennifer Mathews: That's what happened to Kiley Bedwell. For years, he wore glasses with a thick lens over his weaker left eye, and clear glass over his good eye.
Kiley Bedwell: I used to like play video games looking to the side, just so my right eye could see the whole thing and my left eye wouldn't. And I would play sports that way, too.
Jennifer Mathews: At age 12, Kiley became one of the first children with lazy eye to undergo PRK laser surgery.
Dr. Kenneth Wright: We gently remove a few cells from the surface of the cornea, and then the laser does its work and re-shapes the cornea, so that the image is in focus.
Jennifer Mathews: The procedure, much like this one, is performed while the child is fully awake. There's no actual cutting into the eye. Now sixteen, Kiley no longer needs glasses.
Linda Bedwell: I know when I tell people, they're like, 'What?' They think, that we were nuts to do it, but I think there are no regrets.
Jennifer Mathews: Though some doctors are hesitant to perform the surgery on children, Dr. Wright says study results are very encouraging.
Dr. Kenneth Wright: Once we get our data that shows that this is going to work and it's going to be safe, then I think, we can move down to younger children, and even one day, we might do children, under anesthesia, as young as one or two years old.
Jennifer Mathews: This is Jennifer Mathews reporting.
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