Word: corneas
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...cornea of the eye is one part of the body that can be transplanted from one human being to another without touching off the immune reaction or rejection mechanism which dooms most skin and organ grafts. Because of this cornea capability, "eye banks" have helped surgeons restore vision to tens of thousands. But at best the banks have difficulty matching supply with demand, and in many parts of the world, where religious scruples intervene, eye banks cannot even get started. Why not use animal corneas...
Professor Paul Payrau of Paris has been doing just that, he told a World Congress on the Cornea in Washington. First, of course, he tried grafting corneas from animal to animal. He got mixed results, but enough encouragement to try the technique on human patients. Pig corneas were no good because after transplantation they became opaque. But corneas from a large variety of dogs have remained transparent in 50% of Dr. Payrau's cases. Size is unimportant since only a segment of the human cornea is replaced. Dogs' eyes even have an advantage over humans...
...Payrau has also had some success with calf corneas, though they usually do not retain so much transparency as those of dogs. But his most exotic source of supply is a species of small shark, the lesser spotted dogfish (Scyliorhinus caniculus). Its cornea has the advantage of not swelling in water, which made it attractive to Dr. Payrau for patients whose eyes leak fluid, though it is thin and fragile and retains only moderate transparency...
...surgeon. He had taken charge of Jimmy's case two weeks earlier when the young son of an Air Force colonel had injured himself by banging on a .22-cal. blank cartridge with a hammer. Some thing from the explosion had slashed through the cornea (outer covering) of Jimmy's eye, through the dark-brown iris, through the lens and the gelatinous filler behind it, until it had come to rest just short of the retina, the screen at the back of the eyeball (see diagram). Repairing the cornea was routine. But find ing the object that...
...much of the tooth seems to be inert that some dental surgeons hoped that a transplant would not set off rejection reactions. They thought it might be possible to graft teeth from one person to another in much the same way as the bloodless cornea of the eye can be grafted, and for essentially the same reasons. Some dentists at last week's meeting claimed successes in person-to-person transplants that have lasted from two to four years. But they had no X rays to show that the roots were still healthy. Soon, their colleagues predicted, the crowns...