A 67-year-old woman in Turin has regained enough vision to recognise her son and her dog after surgeons completed the world’s first simultaneous transplant of a complete human macula, cornea, and sclera between a patient’s own eyes. The Elena macular transplant in Turin was led by ocular surgeon Professor Michele Reibaldi and took six hours to complete, requiring what he called careful coordination among surgeons, anaesthetists, and orderlies.
The case turned on an unusual coincidence of injury. Elena had lost her sight in a road incident that completely severed the optic nerve in her left eye. That nerve damage was irreversible, but the rest of the left eye’s tissue, including the retina, the cornea, and the macula, remained largely intact. Her right eye told the opposite story: the optic nerve survived the crash undamaged, but the trauma destroyed the retina, the cornea, and the portion of the eye containing ocular stem cells. A standard corneal transplant was not an option.
Two damaged eyes, one surgical solution
Between the two eyes, enough undamaged components existed to assemble one that could function. Professor Reibaldi resolved to salvage the macula, cornea, and sclera from the left eye and transplant them into the right, where the preserved optic nerve could carry signals to the brain. The macula is a small, light-sensitive region at the back of the retina responsible for high-definition central vision; its degeneration is one of the most common causes of blindness, as the World Health Organization recognises in its work on avoidable sight loss globally.
No surgeon had ever attempted a procedure quite like it. ‘Before today, such a contemporaneous transplant of the anterior eye tissue had occurred just once before, while the central retina has never been possible,’ Reibaldi said, according to a translation of his remarks. He described the procedure itself as ‘a complicated marathon.’ Reibaldi practises at the Molinette Hospital, part of Turin’s Città della Salute e della Scienza.
Early recovery and the Elena macular transplant’s first results
Follow-up examinations have confirmed that the transplanted tissues reattached correctly and that Elena is regaining sight in her right eye. The first moments after the operation were, by Reibaldi’s account, as much emotional as clinical. He praised the team’s collaboration before describing what he called the biggest reward: ‘the incredible moment in which Elena, opening her eyes, could finally recognise her son and faithful companion in life, Joe the dog.’
Reibaldi was careful not to overstate where things stand. ‘Now we will wait and see how well the transplanted retina functions, though early signs are encouraging,’ he said. Restoring functional vision after a macular transplant of this kind is a process measured in months, not days, and the longer-term quality of Elena’s sight will depend on how well the grafted tissue integrates and how the eye responds over time.
La Stampa, the Turin-based national newspaper, first reported the intervention, describing Reibaldi’s central role as driven by clinical ‘intuition’ in a case that had no established surgical template to follow. The procedure required every member of the theatre team to work in close coordination across those six hours, with no margin for the kind of error that tissue transplantation at this level of complexity invites.
‘This procedure represents a new frontier in ocular surgery,’ Reibaldi said. That claim rests on a straightforward fact: no surgeon had previously transplanted a central retina, or macula, between human eyes. The Elena macular transplant in Turin now sets that precedent, and Reibaldi’s team will publish the results as the recovery continues. The next months of follow-up will determine whether the procedure can be replicated and, eventually, offered more widely to patients whose injuries share the same unusual profile.
