Surgeons restore sight
Published: May 4, 2005
The visually impaired are being offered new hope after pioneering surgery in East Grinstead helped restore the sight of scores of patients with damaged corneas.
The 40 patients, who all received the treatment on the NHS, suffered poor sight due to a lack of limbal stem cells, which are found under the eyelid and help to keep the surface of the cornea clear.
Many patients, who had congenital disorders or had been blinded after suffering burns from acid, alkali and boiling metal, had undergone failed cornea transplants and were told there was no chance of regaining their sight.
The new procedure involves cultivating stem cells, which occur naturally in the eye, and growing sheets of cells in the laboratory. They are transplanted onto the surface of the eye, which encourages damaged cells to repair themselves.
Sheraz Daya, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, and his team at the corneo plastic unit spent five years developing the treatment.
He said: “The technique not only works, but there was no donor tissue there. That is what really blew our minds.
“We thought we were transplanting donor cells. In actual fact what we did was promote the person’s own body to regenerate.”
He said the laboratory cells appeared to have been shed from the eye and replaced by the patient’s own much more hardy cells.
“They have got their vision now because the patients’ own body has repaired the damage.
“Somehow, we have trig-gered the body into doing its own work. If we found out what that was, the implications are amazing.
“We believe that if this technique can be successful in the eye, similar trials could be undertaken with other parts of the body, thus reducing the demand for organ transplants.”
Only three people were unable to benefit from the procedure because their eyes could not provide the ideal environment for the cells to become attached.
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