RESTORATION OF SIGHT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22366, 13 September 1934, Page 11

RESTORATION OF SIGHT

REMARKABLE EYE SURGERY SUCCESS OF ENGLISH OCCULIST. An English oculist has been successful in restoring sight to persons suffering from n certain type of blindness, according to information from a man in London who has personally observed some of the oculist’s work. Because of the researches and skill of the oculist, Mr Tudor Thomas, there is now hope for those whose blindness consists of opacity of the cornea, that part of the eye which lies in front of the pupil, and which is normally transparent. One of Mr Thomas’s latest patients is a New Zealander who went to England to consult him. He is Mr W. I. Blair, of Te Horo, a brother of Mr Justice Blair and of Mrs H. S. Robinson, of Christchurch. News has been received (says the Press) that an operation performed on one of Mr Blair’s eyes has been successful, and that after 30 years of blindness he is recovering his sight. Persons afflicted with opacity of the cornea have the seeing apparatus behind the eye complete, but they are unable to see, just as persons in a room with the, blinds down cannot see through the windows. Mr Thomas has been successful in grafting new corneac on to the eves of persons who are afflicted with this particular type of blindness, so that the effect of the blind in front of the wiudow is removed. For the opera-

tion it is necessary first to obtain a suitable, cornea, and resort for this is generally made to some case where an eye has been removed; but before the grafting can be attempted the new cornea must come from a person in the same blood group, and must otherwise fit the patient. The operation consists of removing the cornea or part of it and grafting on the new cornea or part, as the case may be. In one case Mr Thomas restored sight to a woman who had been blind for 35 years. He performed two operations in which minute membranes five millimetres in size were sewn with hairlike gut to the sightless eyes. One of the uncertainties of the operation is the possibility that the grafted corneae may become opaque, although clear when grafted. In another case Air Thomas operated on a woman of 30 who had been blind since she was 14 days old. She now has a good deal of vision, though in a small field. A man who was blinded at the age of three was also successfully operated on, and a woman novelist who was blind for ten years is now able to