A team of surgeons in New York has performed what they claim is the world’s first complete eye transplant. The German Ophthalmological Society (DOG) congratulates him on this surgical achievement and at the same time warns against unrealistic expectations. “At the moment, blind people should not raise their hopes of being able to restore their sight through a transplant,” says DOG media spokesperson Professor Dr. Horst Helbig.
At the beginning of November, the New York University Hospital NYU Langone announced* that an interdisciplinary team of doctors had succeeded in transplanting a donated eye into a patient for the first time in the course of a partial face transplant. The 21-hour operation, which according to the clinic involved more than 140 surgeons and other medical staff, had already taken place at the beginning of May. In 2021, 46-year-old patient Aaron James suffered a 7200-volt electric shock in an accident at work, in which he lost his left eye, parts of his face and parts of his left arm.
During the transplant, the blood vessels that supply the eye were connected between the face of the donor and the recipient and the optic nerve was sutured; in addition, stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow were injected into the optic nerve. According to the US medical team, the transplanted retina is now well supplied with blood and the transplanted eyeball is viable. However, there is no visual function in the transplanted eye, and other functions such as eyelid elevation or eye movements have also not been detected.
“The described transplantation is a great surgical achievement that has helped the patient to achieve a significant cosmetic improvement,” says Helbig. “Congratulations,” emphasizes the Director of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Ophthalmology at the University Hospital Regensburg. We know that restoring sight through an eye transplant is the great hope of blind patients. “Based on current knowledge, however, this is an unrealistic expectation,” emphasizes the DOG expert. This is because the severed optic nerve cannot be compared with any other peripheral nerve. “It is more like a protrusion of the white matter of the brain with around one million fibers,” says Helbig. “Regeneration with a functioning connection to the visual center of the brain is therefore not to be expected and did not occur in the transplanted patient.”
At present, it is possible to transplant the cornea of the eye to restore vision. “It restores the sight of many thousands of people in Germany every year,” explains Professor Dr. Claus Cursiefen, Secretary General of the DOG. Even if it is not currently expected that Aaron James will ever be able to see in the transplanted eye, the successes to date are an incentive to continue research work in the field of ocular transplant immunology, neuroregeneration and microsurgery.
*NYU Langone Health Performs World’s First Whole-Eye & Partial-Face Transplant | NYU Langone News
Original publication:
https://www.dog.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/PM-DOG_Augentransplantation_F.pdf
