Posters

The opportunity and the possibility of preserving the stromal lenticules extracted during SMILE procedures

Poster Details

First Author: S.Brogelli ITALY

Co Author(s):    M. Fantozzi   F. Fortunato                 

Abstract Details

Purpose:

We performed a survey among our patients undergoing refractive surgery for myopia by the Femtolasik Refractive Surgery procedure SMILE and among the medical authorities of our region,Tuscany , to understand if preserving the extracted stromal lenticules as a generalized model of surgical practice was feasible.

Setting:

Casa di Cura San Rossore,Pisa,Italy

Methods:

We administered a 10 items questionnaire to 30 patients who were undergoing a SMILE procedure for myopia in which we asked in they could have given their consent to donate the extracted stromal lenticules to the eye-bank of our region for further use of such biological tissue in the care of different illnesses of the eye in different people. We also interviewed some medical authorities preposed to eye-banking to know the technical methods they considered valid for the purpose and to know if the were ready to accept the donations of our future patients waiting for SMILE.

Results:

All the patients wrote they would have been happy to give their consent to the donation of their tissue. The medical authorities told us that criopreservation and inclusion in silica gel were both valid methods .The donation from a living human to a living human, will be under special rules,different from usual corneal transplantation They also made a calculation of the probability of applying the newly proposed kind of tissue to clinical surgical practice in our region and found the probability low ,so they decided not to begin because the job did not seem efficient.

Conclusions:

The opportunity of preserving SMILE lenticules for further medical applications is strong because all the interviewed patients wished to donate their biological tissue to an eye-bank to help ophthalmologists to take care of different illnesses .The possibility of doing it in Tuscany is precluded ,for the moment. The community of the ophthalmic surgeons should produce more evidence of the real usefulness of such stromal tissue in reconstructive procedures to make the doors of the existing corneal bank to open

Financial Disclosure:

NONE