Doctors have taken stem cells from a dead donor and transplanted them into a blind woman, allowing her to see for the first time in years.The pioneering surgery was carried out on Deborah Catlyn, who was blind in one eye through a childhood accident and lost the sight in her other eye after acid was thrown in her face at a nightclub.She feared she would never see her new daughter, Miracle, but just a month after the baby was born, Deborah had the operation.
Surgeons grew the cells in a laboratory to form a thin layer and after 12 days the sheet of stem cells was draped over the front of Deborah's eye and held in place by a biological bandage made from part of a placenta.
Within three weeks the bandage melted away, leaving the stem cells to repair the cornea - the transparent window at the front of the eye.
Deborah had been told she would be blind for life but her sight is now good enough for her to drive.
More than 20 patients have now had the operation at the Queen Victoria Hospital in Sussex and surgeons believe the risks involved are far lower than in a traditional cornea transplant.
That's AWESOME! There's one benefit to stem cell research. Not that there aren't a ton of risks and those shouldn't be overlooked, but the horizon of benefits will only broaden as time goes on (so, commensurately, will the risks...).
04-28-2005 03:48 PM
