The Precious Gift of Sight – Donate Life

Did you know that the first ever successful organ transplant occurred in 1905! This was a cornea transplant performed in Austria and at a time where there were no medications and no anesthetics. Both eyes were operated on, and one of the transplants worked giving this blind man vision for over 40 more years.

Cornea donation is a gift of sight possible by most people within the community, last year in NSW / ACT the Lions NSW Eye Bank had 424 donors that made this sight saving decision. The gift from these people and the support from their families allow the gift of sight to more than 700 patients within our community. In NSW we have highly trained corneal surgeons who are able to perform sight saving surgery with these donations.

At Focus Eye Centre our surgeons also perform such transplants and we would like to thank the donors and their families also for their precious gift.

If you wish more information about eye and organ donation please follow the link to the Donate Life website. Please consider also being a organ/tissue donor.

Dr Con Petsoglou MB BS, MMed(Clin.Epi), FRANZCO
Senior Lecturer / Postgraduate Coordinator
Save Sight Institute, Discipline of Clinical Ophthalmology