Surgeons in New York have performed the first-ever whole-eye transplant in a human, they announced on Thursday, an accomplishment being hailed as a breakthrough even though the patient has not regained sight in the eye.
Vision is very flexible. You can get used to your vision being mirrored, so the eyeball location probably isn’t a major problem.
I don’t think they connected the optic nerve very well. Looks like they just globbed stem cells around it hoping that would do the trick.
Presently, the transplanted eye is not communicating with the brain through the optic nerve.
To encourage healing of the connection between the donor and recipient optic nerves, surgeons harvested adult stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injected them into the optic nerve during the transplant, hoping they would replace damaged cells and protect the nerve.
Vision is very flexible. You can get used to your vision being mirrored, so the eyeball location probably isn’t a major problem.
I don’t think they connected the optic nerve very well. Looks like they just globbed stem cells around it hoping that would do the trick.