A legally blind elderly man recovered his sight after being the first patient to receive a brand new corneal implant developed by an Israeli company. The transplant requires no donor tissue and a minimum of cutting and stitches.
“After years of hard work, seeing a colleague implant the CorNeat KPro with ease and witnessing a fellow human being regain his sight the following day was electrifying and emotionally moving, there were a lot of tears in the room,” says Dr Gilad Litvin, CorNeat Vision co-founder. Right after the surgery, the 78-year-old man was able to recognize family members and read numbers on an eye chart.
The synthetic cornea is free from electronics, can be integrated directly into the eye to replace the scarred or deformed corneas, and uses a biomimetic material that “stimulates cellular proliferation, leading to progressive tissue integration,” according to CorNeat’s website. Other trials have been approved in Israel, in Canada, in France, in the United States, and in the Netherlands.
