A transplant of the central part of the retina from one eye, a world-first surgical procedure, has allowed a woman who had been blind for five years to regain her sight, according to a hospital in Turin, Italy, where the operation took place.
In a statement, Turin’s Molinette Hospital, in northern Italy, announced that the patient, Elena, 67, had completely lost her vision following a serious car accident that caused irreversible damage to the optic nerve in her left eye, leaving her unable to transmit light from the eye to the brain even though the eye’s structures remained intact.
Her right eye, meanwhile, already affected by macular degeneration, had suffered trauma that irreparably compromised both the retina and the transparency of the cornea, the statement explains.
According to the hospital, the total destruction of the area containing stem cells made a classic corneal transplant entirely impossible, condemning the woman to blindness. But this obstacle, considered insurmountable until now, was overcome by professor Michele Reibaldi and his medical team following a highly complex operation that lasted around six hours.
Read more: Experimental vaccine to prevent pancreatic cancer shows positive results
Making use of healthy tissue from the left eye, which was no longer serving any function, doctors removed and transferred to the right eye a complete anatomical block that included the cornea, the sclera, the conjunctiva and, for the first time anywhere in the world, the central part of the retina, the macula, the hospital explains.
Through this biological transfer, it was possible to reconstruct a functioning eye using tissue from both affected eyes.
“We are now waiting to see to what extent the grafted retina will be able to function, but the initial results are encouraging,” commented Michele Reibaldi, director of the hospital’s university ophthalmology clinic, cited in the statement.
