Childrennewborns, who return to reacquire the vistato look at the world thanks to a transplant of cornea. The last time it happened less than a month ago: two little patients received a corneal transplant at the age of six and nine months, respectivelyboth affected by Peters anomalya rare congenital malformation of theeye, which affects only one in a million cases and causes clouding of the cornea. The two interventions, carried out at a hospital in Emilia, required two fabrics donated in Veneto and selected by the Banca degli Occhi del Veneto Foundation among those with suitable biological characteristics. Therefore, in addition to the progress of the techniques and the skill of the surgeon, the gesture of an adult donor from the Veneto region made it possible to save the sight of the two very young patients. The extraordinary fact is that the sending of such rare and delicate eye tissue for transplants was repeated, in 2022, eleven times.
Babies regaining their sense of sight
Foundation Veneto Eye Bankreference center for the collection and dispatch of eye tissue of Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and the Autonomous Province of Trentoduring 2022 sent six corneas to hospitals in the Veneto region, four outside the region and one cornea to Liverpool, in the United Kingdom, for operations all intended for patients under one year of agemostly affected by congenital glaucoma, ulcers and traumas.
“These children they have a hope of growing up with a functioning visual apparatus, thanks to the progress made by surgery and thanks to the yes, in 2022, of three thousand donors» says the Medical Director of the Banca degli Occhi Foundation, Diego Ponzin. «Fundamental, in these cases, was the possibility of selecting corneal tissues from adult donors, in some cases even of rather advanced age, but with suitable characteristics. A signal that we hope will offer comfort not only to the families of young patients but also to those of many donors – he continues -. It is important to reiterate that the gesture of donating corneas can give hope to thousands of patients, and allow important results. At the same time, the skill of the surgeon and the timeliness of the intervention are fundamental: only by undergoing a transplant during the first months of life can the child adequately develop his own brain functions related to vision».
Eye tissues held by the Eye Bank, the numbers
However, the case of young patients is only one aspect of the more than positive trend that involved the entire Veneto regional transplant network and, specifically, the activity of the Eye Bank. Over the past year, in the headquarters located in the Rama Pavilion of Teacher, 5,885 ocular tissues were processed thanks to the donation of 3,001 donors, equal to +6.4% compared to 2021 and 37.8% of all corneas collected in 2022 at a national level. In terms of transplants, 4,286 eye tissues were distributed in Italy, of which 1,782 in Veneto, another 918 tissues in European countries such as Portugal, England and Germany, 66 in Africa (in particular in affiliated facilities in South Africa and Kenya) and 1 in Asia.