Italian surgeons perform world-first eye part transplant

In a medical first, surgeons in Italy have successfully restored vision to a 67-year-old woman by transplanting parts of one eye into the other. The patient, identified as Elena, had been blind for five years following a car accident that caused irreversible damage to her left optic nerve, severing communication between the eye and the brain.

Because her right eye was also suffering from macular degeneration and extensive trauma from the accident, traditional corneal transplants were not viable. To address this, medical teams performed a complex six-hour procedure to transfer the cornea, sclera, conjunctiva, and, for the first time in medical history, the macula—the central part of the retina responsible for fine detail and facial recognition—from the structurally intact but non-functional left eye to the right eye.

Following the surgery, the patient was able to immediately recognize her son and her guide dog. Doctors described the intervention as a “very complex marathon” and noted that the procedure represents a new frontier in ophthalmology, as transplanting the central area of the retina had never previously been possible.