New flexible artificial cornea may help to restore sight
23 April 2002
Australian researchers have developed the world's first flexible artificial cornea.
The device is designed to replace a diseased or damaged cornea or a failed human graft and can give back sight to some patients.
The AlphaCor is an advance on traditional rigid synthetic corneas and has taken 10 years to develop at the Lions Eye Institute of Western Australia in Perth.
Talking at the XXIXth International Congress of Ophthalmology in Sydney today, clinical research fellow at the Lions Eye Institute Dr Celia Hicks said that results from trials indicated that the AlphaCor had a success rate at one year of better than 80 per cent.
So far the AlphaCor has been implanted into 41 patients who have been monitored for up to 3-and-a-half years. AlphaCor has not been tested in children yet as researchers want to get more experience in adults first. The youngest patient so far to receive one has been 20 years old.
Problems that can occur are if the tissue around the implant becomes inflamed or if the wrong type of eye drops are used and the implant goes cloudy. In both these cases the implant can be removed safely and replaced if necessary.
Dr Hicks said that full visual potential could be restored to some patients who were unsuitable candidates for a human donor graft (one option for restoring sight where the cornea is damaged) and who had few alterative treatment options.
She said this was 'very encouraging' as the device was initially targeted at high-risk patients who would have had no realistic likelihood of a conventional graft succeeding.
Currently surgeons in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney are using the corneas and they will be available in some other Australian cities shortly.
Dr Hicks said that AlphaCor was not suitable for patients with 'dry eyes' or eyes that had suffered from the herpes simplex virus.
About 10 million people worldwide suffer from corneal blindness, yet only 100,000 corneal implants are performed each year. Corneal blindness can be caused by trauma or disease which cause scarring or inflammation of the cornea, thus affecting the passage of light through the eye.
Last Reviewed: 23 April 2002
