Expanding Eye Bank

Some 10,000 to 15,000 of the nation's 250,000 blind might see again, if their foggy corneas could be replaced by clear ones. To get clear corneas, the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration was .formed last spring (TIME, April 23) and now has 50 member hospitals in nine states.

The corneal operation is "a relatively simple procedure," according to Manhattan Ophthalmologist R. Townley Paton, one of the bank's founders. Chief requirements are a skilled surgeon and good eye material to work with. One eye will restore sight to three others because all the corneal tissue can be used (the cornea covers the whole iris), but each transplant needs to be only about average pupil size (see cut). Bandages come off in three or four days; stitches are out in a week.

The bank has already helped many grateful patients to see. Its researching doctors have now found out how to keep corneas three days, thus reducing cornea waste (two days used to be the limit).

Last fortnight the bank announced that it was ready to expand to the rest of the U.S. It will solicit funds and healthy eyes. (Eyes are given by bequest and arrangements with surviving relatives, or by gift from people who must lose them by surgery.) The money will be used to provide scholarships to doctors all over the U.S. who want to learn the corneal grafting technique, and to establish bank branches wherever they are needed.

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