A successful cornea transplant operation was performed on a Woman in her seventies in Imam Faisal Hospital. She regained her sight after being blind for ten years.
This is one of the unique operations in the Eastern Province because it is based on transplanting a new cornea utilizing healthy stem cells.
Dr. Abdulhakeem Attajoury, Chief of the medical team and Professor of Consultative Medical Ophthalmology said this woman was completely blind because of dense opacity (the degree to which light is blocked from entering the eye) in the cornea with a fibrosis on the surface of the eye which resulted from Chronic Inflammatory Trachoma which led to the disappearance of stem cells of the eye.
As a result of having healthy stem cells in the other eye, although it there was disease in the retina, They were able to transplant a new cornea and transfer the stem cells to the blind eye.
He added that another operation has been performed on a blind man who suffered from glaucoma and dense opacity in the cornea and fibrosis on the surface of his eye for more than 10 years. However, the overall success of the transplant and percentage of improvement in the vision was minimal because of the death of optic nerve.
Dr. Attajoury confirmed that the benefits of the recent operation were negligible, but for the woman it was higher, exceeding 50 percent. He added that these kinds of operations are done in specialized centers.
He added that the important aspect of these two operations was the existence and utilization of of healthy stem cells in the other eye which was done without giving the patient immune-suppressing drugs.
He mentioned that stem cells exist in parts of the cornea and adjacent parts of the conjunctivas. These cells renew the corneal surface cells every 7 days and treat partial or total blindness resulting from Trachoma which occurs frequently among the elderly in the Eastern Province. Such blindness requires stem cell transplants in order to increase the success rate of transplanted cornea in these cases.
These kinds of operations take more than two hours and the doctors consider it as a providing new life for the patient. Because of the great development in medicine, blindness is no longer the deep concern that it was in the past.
Dr. Attajoury said that the patient should be observed frequently and the stitches should be removed from the cornea from between 6 months and a year, or they can make a Lasik Operation.