CORNEAL TRANSPLANT - TO DO OR NOT TO DO

Yesterday I entered on the New York Times web page to search information about health problems, like I do every day for my site, and my eyes caught up an interesting article about Corneal Transplants in the The Third World Countries. It seems that in the Middle East poor countries is a lack of human cornea stock, because people doesn't want to donate their precious eyes after death.

What you suppose to do with your cornea after you are death? I don't understand. You will use it to see what happens in your grave? (that's possible only if you also have a flashlight with you) O.K. ! Enough with the jokes! Let's talk about serious problems because this is a serious blog.

The cornea is the transparent tissue seen on the front of the eye. It covers the iris and the lens. Together with the lens, the cornea refracts the light entering the eye, helping it to focus on the retina. So, for this function, the cornea is one of the most important part of the eye anatomy. It is good to know that the cornea is non vascular tissue (there are not blood vessels in it). This feature makes the transplanted cornea to not be rejected by the receiver.

There are a lot of medical disorders of the cornea, but most of it includes the fact that the corneal stroma (the middle part of the cornea) develops visualy significant opacity, iregularity or edema. Treating this disorders is possible only with a corneal transplant. For the transplant, doctors can use a deceased cornea, or a synthetic replacement (called keratoprostheses). The synthetic one is made of plastic materials.

Synthetic corneas ar a little expensive and not anyone can afford to pay for this kind of transplant. So, the best solution for treating patients with cornea disorders in The Third World is to use human corneas, donated by the locals (after their deaths, of course).

My instinct says not only the undeveloped countries have problems with the organ donation. This problem exist in the western countries to! Many of us aren't so open-minded and do not want to donate their organs. Think about you! You will donate your organs after your death? Someone in great suffer may need it for saving their life's.