This is eye donation month. SSM Health Greater Fond du Lac in partnership with the Lions Bank of Wisconsin and UW Organ and Tissue donation is hosting tabling events this week to raise awareness about the importance of organ, eye and tissue donation. Lions Eye Bank Development specialist Anne Otter says donation can give the comfort of knowning their loved ones’ wishes were honored and that they live on through donation.
About 50,000 corneal transplants are performed in the US each year and the surgery has a 95% success rate.
In the U.S, the most commonly transplanted tissues are bones, tendons, ligaments, skin, heart valves and blood vessels. About 2.5 million people benefit from the gifts of tissue each year.
Tissue is not as common as eye, even people with cancer or people with poor vision, can give the gift of sight, but when someone is able to give the gift of tissue, they can help as many as 75 people through transplantation; while cornea/eye, four.
The cornea, a dome of clear tissue at the front of each eye, covering the iris and pupil, that acts as a windshield that protects the delicate eye apparatus behind it, and focuses light onto the retina, which sends signals that the brain turns into images (your vision). You need this combo of windshield and camera lens to focus and see clearly. But many things can go wrong within the five layers of tissue that make up the cornea. That can make it hard to see and rob you of the ability to read, drive, work, and perform the activities of daily living.
A table event is being held from 11:30am to 1:30pm Thursday at the Waupun Memorial Hospital cafe.
