Μake us preferred on GoogleFor the first time on record, Italian doctors have transplanted the central part of the retina, the macula, The result was that the patient had her sight restored, after having been blind for five years, a hospital in Turin has announced. Her right eye, meanwhile, already affected by macular degeneration, had suffered irreversible damage to both the retina and cornea. The hospital said the complete destruction of the tissue containing the eye’s stem cells made a standard cornea transplant impossible, effectively condemning the patient to permanent blindness. That obstacle, until now considered insurmountable, was overcome by Professor Michele Reibaldi and his team. French ophthalmologist Michel Paques, head of the eye department at Paris’s Quinze-Vingts National Hospital and a specialist in retinal disease, confirmed to AFP that having sight restored this was was a global first.