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Little-Known Operation Restores Sight

A little-known variation on a corneal transplant is saving the sight of people with rare diseases or chemical and heat burns, reports The New York Times.

In the procedure, surgeons graft stem cells from a donor or the patient's good eye to the injured one. The cells are taken from the limbus, a rim around the cornea, which normally keeps the cornea clear. But when the cornea is injured, scar tissue clouds it over, causing blindness. The stem cell transplants allow the eye to regrow clear tissue, restoring sight.

In the United States, where the operation is performed about 300 times annually, the procedure has a 90 percent to 100 percent success rate in restoring sight loss stemming from industrial accidents, burns, and damage from contact lenses, the newspaper says.

The operation was also performed by Iranian surgeons on dozens of victims of mustard gas in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, the Times reports.

-- Robert Preidt and Scott Roberts

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