Word: corneas
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...Edward Beattie, called on New York Hospital's surgeon-in-chief, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, to send for the organs that his staff could use. While the body was perfused with oxygenated blood to ward off tissue degeneration, Lillehei's assistants removed the eyes for fresh-cornea transplants, both kidneys and the heart, and rushed them by underground tunnels to waiting surgery teams. Within a few hours, the Lillehei group had transplanted the heart (into a 36-year-old man), both kidneys and one cornea-the second cornea a day later...
Their decision was not reckless. Baboons are so prolific and hungry for farmers' crops that they are legally classified as vermin in South Africa. Highly developed primates and kin to man, baboons are also highly useful in medical research. Only recently, a baboon's cornea was successfully grafted onto a man's eye. A pig's liver, although it tolerates human blood, is not nearly so sophisticated as the baboon...
...honed scalpel. Even better, the laser knife does not draw blood. Its searing but highly localized heat cauterizes capillaries and other blood vessels as they are severed. Like ordinary light, laser beams pass through transparent substances but are absorbed by darker, opaque materials. Thus they flash harmlessly through the cornea and lens of the eyeball to weld a detached retina back into place, or puncture small holes in the retina to ease the pressure of glaucoma. They also penetrate translucent skin to vaporize skin cancers, or tattoos that out-live the patient's enthusiasm for such decoration. Lasers...
...knew why a few succeeded. Skin grafts, often attempted after burns, slough off after a few weeks unless they are taken from another part of the patient's own body. The first consistently successful human homografts (between two individuals of the same species), beginning in 1905, involved the cornea-the transparent, plastic covering of the eyeball which has no blood circulation...
...same virus that causes simple cold sores on the lip-herpesvirus-can also attack the surface of the eye; if unchecked, it can do damage that will scar the cornea, resulting in partial or complete blindness. The best treatment has hitherto proved successful in only 60% of cases, and the disease ranks as the commonest infection causing corneal scarring. Faced with cases that seemed beyond help, Dr. Bellows decided to try a cryoprobe chilled to a temperature...