Italian doctors have transplanted the central part of the retina of an eye, the macula, for the first time in the world, restoring sight to a patient who has been blind for five years, a hospital in Turin (north) announced.
This 67-year-old woman, named Elena, “had completely lost her sight following a serious road accident, which caused irreversible damage to the optic nerve in her left eye, causing her to lose her sight due to the impossibility of transmitting light from the eye to the brain, while leaving the ocular structures intact,” indicates a press release from the Molinette hospital sent to AFP on Monday.
On the other hand, his right eye, already suffering from maculopathy, “had suffered trauma such that it had irreparably compromised the retina and the transparency of the cornea,” explains the press release.
“The total destruction of the part containing the stem cells made a classic corneal transplant completely impossible,” condemning this woman to blindness, according to the hospital.
But this obstacle, “considered until now to be insurmountable” according to the Turin hospital, was overcome by Professor Michele Reibaldi and his medical team.
“By exploiting healthy tissue, but no longer fulfilling its function in the left eye, the doctors removed and transferred to the right eye a complete anatomical block including the cornea, the sclera, the conjunctiva and, for the first time in the world, the central part of the retina, the macula,” explains the hospital.
This “biological transfer” made it possible to reconstruct a seeing eye from the two affected eyes.
“We are now waiting to see to what extent the transplanted retina will be able to function, but the first results are encouraging,” commented Professor Reibaldi in the press release, specifying that the “very complex” intervention lasted almost six hours.
French professor Michel Paques, head of the ophthalmology department at the National Hospital of 15-20 in Paris and specialist in retinal pathologies, confirmed to AFP that this was a world first.
In the absence of published and peer-reviewed data, “it is not possible to objectively evaluate the technique, its reproducibility or the results announced,” however, the Parisian hospital clarified.
