Laser Corneal Transplants

[Lisa Nixon]

There was an excellent article in the Times on Saturday about doing transplants with laser. The grafts can be cut more accurately and have a sort of step so it slots into the rest of the cornea. This means that less stitches are needed and healing is faster. Sounds hopeful and an improvement on previous techniques. The article might be on the Times website.

[Lisa Nixon]

This may or may not work:

Laser technique makes light work of tricky surgery to save eyesight

[Lisa Nixon]

[url][url]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2072439.ece[/url][/url]

[Pat A]

Lisa
Mr Daya (refered to in the Times article) was the guest speaker at this years KC conference.....and talked about this very topic! (I assume you weren't at the conference...?) And very interesting and informative it was too!

[John Smith]

Yes, Mr. Daya's talk will be on the DVD of this year's conference.

It is interesting to note from the article though that

— 93 per cent of corneal grafts are still functioning after one year and 72 per cent after five years. Many will continue to function for many more years after that

This is worryingly low (much lower than usually quoted), but better stated than usual. This is the definition of "success" from the surgeon's point of view.

[Lisa Nixon]

Unfortunately I couldn't get to the conference - the IOM is horrendously expensive to travel to and from!

I do think the laser technique looks very promising.

[Anne Klepacz]

John - I think the lower graft survival rate quoted here may be because it's looking at transplants done for all sorts of reasons, not just KC, whereas the figures we've had before are just looking at KC grafts. In other words, survival rates are better when the reason for the graft is KC rather than some other eye conditions. So I don't think we need to feel too discouraged! And hopefully this new technique will be adopted by other surgeons and make the prospects better for everyone.
Anne

[GarethB]

I know my consultant would rather graft a KC eye because for some reason the grafts take a whole load better and the overall vision corrected or otherwise is far better too. He like others have no idea why this should be the case, my theory is our brains have learnt to be a whole load more adaptable to vision changes we go through, it can adapt better.

A bit like Mr Daya said with C3R and intacs, the topography looks pretty much unchanged but the pationt has gone from next to no vision to something quite good.