Totally blind for 30 years, he recovered his sight after an extraordinary surgery. It happened at the Molinette hospital in Turin where an 83-year-old underwent an autotransplantation of the entire ocular surface (cornea, part of the sclera and the conjunctiva) from one of his eyes. The elderly man had first lost sight in his left eye – due to irreversible retinal blindness – and then, in the last 10 years, had gone blind in his right eye due to a rare pathology.

The levy from the left eye, unrecoverable from a functional point of view, but with a good ocular surface, allowed him to see again. The operation , which lasted four hours , was performed by a team led by Michele Reibaldi, director of the Molinette university eye clinic and expert retinal surgeon, and Vincenzo Sarnicola, president of the Italian Society of cornea and stem cells.