Improving Eyesight With Cornea Transplants – Safer and Faster Techniques

Improving eyesight can be done by many kinds of techniques. One of those techniques is called cornea transplant. This technique is intended at restoring patient’s poor eyesight caused by diseased or cloudy cornea. It is true that light can not go through to the retina when the cornea is clouded. As a result, this condition can cause blindness.

Scarring from either injury or infection can cause cloudiness or opaqueness in the cornea. In the case of a cloudy swelling of the cornea, it may be part and parcel of the aging process. This layer unable to grow back or regenerate, can only be replaced via this transplant technique.

Improving eyesight through this technique depends on the healthy nerve and retina at the back of the eyes. As long as the nerve and retina are still healthy, the surgery might be successful. Many people get better sight after undergoing the cornea surgery.

The cornea transplants are a bit different from other forms of organ transplantation in which these transplants can be repeated several times if previous transplants have failed. However, the success rate for repeat transplants may decrease over time.

Today new cornea transplants are much more advanced and different from conventional cornea transplants. In a conventional cornea transplant, the surgeon replaces the whole cornea with a donated cornea. Now, with new cornea transplant methods, only the damaged layer of the cornea is replaced. These methods are safer and help patients recover faster.

Unlike the conventional form of transplantation (known as the Penetrating Keratoplasty), the new transplant techniques use microsurgical dissection, automated microkeratomes and new emerging femtosecond surgical lasers to finely separate the different layers of the 0.5 mm thick cornea. Through these methods, only the damaged layers of the patient’s cornea are replaced while healthy layers are retained.

The new methods are less risky, provide better and faster visual recovery, require no stitches, and have fewer complications. It means the recovery time is shorter and therefore the patients spend less money. The good thing about these cornea transplant techniques is that every donated cornea can be used on more than one patient.

Improving eyesight can not be separated from the development of technology. Improvements in technology and surgical instrumentation have allowed for the development of newer techniques. The patient’s visual recovery is also faster with the new method compared to conventional cornea transplantation.