Why shouldn’t I have corneal transplant surgery instead of bothering with contact lenses?
As an invasive surgical procedure, corneal transplant surgery poses the risk of potentially serious complications even under the best circumstances. Young people are at greater risk for graft rejection. Furthermore, transplanted corneas have a limited lifespan and the younger the patient, the greater the probability that it will eventually fail and require another corneal transplant. Because of the absence of blood vessels in the cornea, the healing process is slow and it may take a year or longer before the shape of the transplanted cornea (and effectiveness as a focusing lens) has stabilized. During this time, vision in this eye is often not functional. Even after flawless surgery, the healing process can be uneven causing the corneal graft to become warped and create abnormal astigmatism. Approximately 25% of eyes with successful corneal transplants do not achieve good quality vision with glasses and require hard contact lenses for satisfactory eyesight. Yet their distorted shape ca
