Corneal Transplant

A corneal transplant, also known as corneal grafting or penetrating keratoplasty, is an effective surgical procedure to restore vision to those blind from corneal disease such as corneal injuries, infections, age-related corneal degenerations or damaged corneas due to injuries.

What is a Corneal Transplant?
A corneal transplant is a surgical procedure that involves replacing a diseased or damaged cornea with a donor corneal tissue. When a cornea is cloudy or scarred (images below), light is unable pass through effectively to reach the light-sensitive retina. As a result, this leads to poor vision or blindness.

Optically, a corneal transplant is able to improve visual acuity by replacing the opaque or distorted host tissue by clear healthy donor tissue. And cosmetically, it is able to improve the appearance of patients with corneal scars that have given a whitish or opaque hue to the cornea. A corneal transplant is a very delicate surgical procedure and is best performed by experienced cornea ophthalmologists.

In cases where the cornea is only partially diseased, only the affected portion (either the front portion or the back portion) is dissected away and replaced by a partial donor cornea tissue. This procedure, also known as Lamellar Keratoplasty (LK), is more advanced and complicated thus more challenging to perform.

At EEC, our surgeon is well-equipped with the expertise to perform this difficult procedure. Thus far, it is our preferred procedure as it involves only removing the diseased layers of the cornea while still preserving the healthy layers, thus minimizing the risks of corneal graft rejection, a significant cause for "failure" today in a corneal transplant.

Where does EEC get its cornea from?
EEC uses donor corneas that are of excellent quality procured from local donors from the Singapore Eye Bank, as well as from internationally accredited eye banks from the United States of America and the Philippines for transplants. Usually, patients only have to wait 1-2 weeks to receive a cornea.

Eagle Eye Centre is one of the few centres that have performed numerous challenging corneal transplant surgeries. Our surgeon also has experience in Osteo-odontal Keratoprosthesis Surgery (OOKP) which is the latest artificial cornea surgery.

With an overall transplant success rate exceeding 90%, some of our post corneal transplant patients have even achieve good vision after surgery. At EEC, we perform predominantly Lamellar Keratoplasty (LK) - the more advanced corneal transplant procedures.

Non-Singaporeans can also undergo corneal transplant surgery in Eagle Eye Centre.

To learn more about our services, contact us now at (65) 6456 1000 or drop us an email here.