Canadian eye surgery could prevent blindness in thousands worldwide
Surgeons at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have developed a procedure that could prevent blindness in patients with corneal anesthesia, a serious but rare disease. But they never imagined their treatment could be used to treat thousands of patients worldwide with long forgotten diseases like leprosy. A team of two plastic surgeons and one ophthalmologist at Sick Kids has developed a new nerve graft procedure that could return feeling to eyes that have lost all ability to sense pain. It was supposed to be a highly specialized surgery that would only be used in a small number of kids in Toronto. But to everyone's surprise it quickly piqued the interest of surgeons in India, Colombia, Argentina, France, China and around the world. "There's a big pent-up demand for adults. There's a huge number of people that could benefit," says Dr. Asim Ali, who developed the procedure along with Dr. Gregory Bors...