Surgery Restores Vision In Man After 55 Years Of Blindness In Right Eye

Picture Source: MedlinePlus

As a child, Mr. (not named...we'll call him Bob) experienced an accident where the impact of a stone to his right eye detached the retina from the rest of his eye, leaving him completely blind in his right eye. While a detached retina can normally be reattached, restoring the person's vision, prolonged detachment causes the retina to degenerate making it almost impossible to restore vision.

Fast forward 55 years into the future, and doctors at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary decided to take on his case...kind of by accident. 'Bob' only went to the hospital to complain of pain in his right eye. Upon diagnosis, he was found to have "total hyphema, neovascular glaucoma, high intraocular pressure and a detached retina" (If you somehow missed the 6 years of med school, the above basically means that his eye couldn't detect light, it was overcrowded by newly formed blood vessels, and he had very high blood pressure in his eye, respectively.) After an operation to relieve Bob of his pain, the doctors were able to restore his ability to distinguish light from dark. Psyched by the success of this operation, they decided to attempt to reattach his retina.
After he recovered from the surgery, and to everyone's amazement, Bob was finally able to see "to such an extent that he could count fingers at a distance of five meters."
Surgeries like these give us all hope for a brighter future, no pun intended!


Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110617081630.htm