Cell Transplants Can Help Some Regain Sight

Giving new hope to people blinded by fire, chemical burns or certain illnesses, doctors are restoring victims’ sight by transplanting special tissue-making cells into the eye.

Until recently, blindness caused by damage to the eye’s surface was considered largely untreatable.

This procedure, pioneered a decade ago but refined since then, would not help people who were born blind or lost their sight because of nerve or retina damage. It is only for legally blind patients who can still sense light.

In the first long-term study of the procedure, Japanese researchers restored sight to half of the eyes on which they performed surgery, though some needed as many as four operations. The study was reported in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 39 patients had become legally blind in one or both eyes, meaning they could, at best, count fingers held up in front of them.