The Market-Winning Potential of a Better, Safer Eye Surgery
Editor's note: Revolutionary technology can mean big growth potential...
Our resident biotech expert Dave Lashmet has spent the past seven years identifying world-changing innovations with incredible upside for his readers. And one of those inventions is already changing eye surgery for millions of patients... and leading to huge gains for subscribers who followed Dave's advice.
In yesterday's Masters Series, we shared the first part of the "unlocked" May 2017 issue of Dave's Stansberry Venture Technology newsletter. In the conclusion today, we'll reveal more insights from Dave, including some of the latest advancements in eye-surgery technology... and how one company is benefiting as demand for this innovation takes off...
The Market-Winning Potential of a Better, Safer Eye Surgery
If you're lucky enough to have decent vision, you probably don't think much about your eyes every day.
But an eye has many parts... and a lot of complex functions.
At the front of your eye is the cornea. It's a transparent lens that gathers light and directs it to the back of your eye. The shape of your cornea determines how well that light is focused when it lands.
There's also a lens behind your cornea... and it moves. Muscles inside your eye bend the lens to bring objects into focus for your central vision. That helps you see in fine detail.
Prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses can "correct" for a misshapen cornea. They redirect incoming light so that it focuses correctly. But we can do even more...
There's plenty of evolving tech and medicine here – progressive lenses made from exotic materials or longer-lasting, better-fitting contact lenses. Today, I'll cover a company that's safely reshaping the cornea... with lasers.
You've probably heard of LASIK. Well, the laser technology I'll cover today is a revolutionary successor to LASIK. It uses a new tool and technique for a faster, safer experience... which makes for a market with big growth potential.
Let me show you what I mean...
Like LASIK, this new surgery replaces glasses or contacts. But it's not just cosmetic. For example, the military uses it for perfect vision without the logistics nightmare of wearing glasses.
To explain the differences between LASIK and this new surgery, let's start with the anatomy of the cornea. Both surgeries target this part of the eye. But one big difference lies in how to reach the cornea.
As you can see in the picture below, your cornea has three layers separated by two super-thin boundaries...
What you can see in this diagram are the three main layers...
- A thin outer layer composed of epithelial cells (basically skin cells) and some nerve cells
- A thick middle layer filled with collagen and collagen-producing cells, plus some immune cells
- Followed by a thin inner layer of endothelial cells (like capillary cells), but no other blood vessels
See, even though there are living cells in your cornea, they get oxygen from the tears that bathe your eye. That's because blood is not transparent. Any blood in front of your retina would get in the way of your vision.
So evolution found a way for your eye to react to touch (nerves) and to receive oxygen (blinking). And if it took millions of years to evolve something... it's probably best not to smash it.
Unfortunately, that's the drawback to LASIK... and why we're so excited about a new, better procedure...
A LASIK laser fries the first surface it encounters. That's why in a LASIK procedure, a doctor must first peel back the front of your cornea before using a laser to reshape the collagen-rich stroma layer, and then fold the flap over your eye.
But if light could pass through the outer layer without burning it, you wouldn't have to cut the outermost layer of the cornea.
So you wouldn't have a fragile flap that can shear off... And you'd never get dry eye from cutting the nerves that ask your eyelid to blink.
To do that, you'd need a laser that can stop its energy where it's needed. You'd need a laser that can take advantage of "Einstein's last secret"...
Fortunately, this exact device has been invented...
The new procedure is called SMILE. (Editor's note: At the time of Dave's original recommendation in 2017, SMILE was just hitting U.S. vision centers, treating the first U.S. customers.)
This method is already FDA-approved. So unlike a lot of Venture Technology picks, we don't have to guess what the FDA thinks... It already told us.
We think SMILE will trigger a revolution in cosmetic eye surgery because it safely reshapes the cornea. It only needs a small (2 mm) incision to pull out a disc of extra collagen. SMILE stands for "small incision lenticule extraction," where a "lenticule" is the disc of excess material you cut from the cornea – so that the rest of your cornea gives you perfect vision. The incision heals within days.
This surgery was approved in Europe in 2011. Since then, surgeons have performed more than 3.5 million SMILE surgeries globally in 70 countries.
And during that time, we've seen that the positive effects are the same as with LASIK. It's the same level of vision correction, and it lasts just as long. But LASIK has more potential side effects, including more cases of severe dry eye and lost eye sensitivity.
SMILE is a premium, expensive procedure... So even though it's faster and safer than LASIK, it won't immediately take over the market. But compared with any other cosmetic surgery, it's cheap. And it's bound to be popular.
As I hinted earlier, the U.S. military has bought the machines that make this possible. (It's cheaper for the government to pay for a SMILE procedure than to deliver prescription lenses to everywhere in the world we send our troops, including active combat zones.) Elite cosmetic eye surgery clinics are buying in, too. And this technology will spread as it's introduced across the U.S.
As of 2018, U.S. surgeons perform about 700,000 LASIK procedures annually. So if SMILE wins half this total market – including military recruits who wear glasses – this could mean 350,000 procedures per year.
Again, because doctors have completed more than 3.5 million SMILE surgeries globally since 2011, we can see there is proven demand.
The company behind all this is Carl Zeiss Meditec (AFX.DE)... It's a European public company that is majority-owned by Zeiss, a 175-year-old industrial giant headquartered in Germany with more than 34,000 global employees. And it has the first-mover advantage in this field.
Carl Zeiss Meditec is a profitable, growing, dividend-paying firm. It has taken steps into multiple areas of the medical-devices field. In 2017, though, I recommended Carl Zeiss Meditec for its SMILE laser surgery tool. Since then, subscribers are still holding... up more than 200% so far.
That's how we're profiting from Einstein's last secret.
Editor's note: Subscribers who followed Dave's advice to buy Carl Zeiss Meditec in 2017 are up more than 200% today. But he says another company – which he's calling "Venture Opportunity No. 73" – could blow that return out of the water...
This technology business only recently went public – and Dave believes it's perfectly positioned to profit from an overlooked trend that's taking hold. He shared the story during a special event last week... including why he believes this could be one of the biggest winners of his career.
For a limited time only, you can watch a free replay of Dave's broadcast. But you have to act fast... before Wall Street pushes shares out of reach. Learn more here.