Bradenton Eye Surgery

If you live in the Bradenton area and are looking for an eye surgery clinic, trust your vision to Coastal Eye. For Cornea Transplants, Coastal Eye's fellowship-trained cornea transplant surgeons are among the best in the country.

A cornea transplant may need to be performed for any one of a number of reasons. Corneal scars from injuries or infections are just one reason, along with keratoconus and Fuchs dystrophy to name a few more common reasons. Dr Davis and Dr. Friedberg are Cornea fellowship-trained in performing the latest in cornea transplant techniques.

If you need a cornea transplant, you may be just beginning to learn that you're not alone. More than 45,000 cornea transplants are performed worldwide every year, with excellent success rates. In Bradenton's Coastal Eye Clinic, corneal transplant eye surgery is performed on an outpatient basis, allowing you to go home later that day.

There are 2 types of cornea transplant performed at Coastal Eye Institute: Penetrating Keratoplasty and DSEK.

- Penetrating Keratoplasty is a full thickness replacement of the central cornea with donor tissue. The procedure involves removing a circle of tissue from the patient's cornea. This is performed with special microsurgical instruments. A donor tissue is prepared by removing a matching circle of corneal tissue from the donated cornea. The new cornea is then secured to the patient's eye with delicate sutures, which are barely visible and do not irritate the eye. These sutures hold the tissue in place while the wound heals, which is a slow process.

At the time of the corneal transplant, additional surgery may be performed in order to remove a cataract, replace an intraocular lens implant, control glaucoma or repair the retina. Vision may be blurred for some weeks after the surgery, but will progressively begin to clear. After two to three months of healing, some of the sutures may be removed and spectacles may be prescribed to focus the vision. However, it may take six months or more before the full recovery of vision has been achieved.

- DSEK surgery has only been developed over the last 10 years and is indicated when a patient only has a problem with the inner lining of the cornea. One such example is Fuchs dystrophy. The surgery involves replacing only the damaged portion of the cornea, leaving the patient's healthy cornea behind. DSEK offers a quicker recover time, allowing patients to recover in weeks rather than months.

Donor tissue is provided by an eye bank, which carefully screens the tissue. Federal regulations require eye banks to screen all tissue for AIDS, Hepatitis, and a variety of other diseases; only healthy tissue, which is free of disease, may be used for transplant surgery. Due to the availability of corneal tissue, surgery can be scheduled as an elective procedure at a time convenient for the patient and surgeon.

There are risks associated with corneal transplant surgery, as is the case with any type of surgery. The most important risk is rejection of the transplant. Fortunately, the risk of rejection is small (5% to 10% for most conditions requiring transplantation) and usually controllable with topical medications.

If you would like to schedule an appointment at Bradenton's Coastal Eye to discuss eye surgery or to have an evaluation performed, please call 941-748-1818.