The University Hospital Complex of Cartagena has doubled the number of cornea transplants performed in the last two years, improving the visual prognosis and quality of life of 56 patients from the Ophthalmology service in 2024.
The Ophthalmology service of the University Hospital Complex of Cartagena was a pioneer in incorporating new corneal techniques in 2022, such as endothelial transplantation, which allows to improve both the prognosis and vision of patients, thus increasing their quality of life.
In 2022, the number of transplants performed in the Cartagena health area was 23, rising to 36 in 2023, multiplying by 2.5 the number of transplants performed currently, and offering a therapeutic alternative to patients.
Nowadays, these types of transplants can restore almost all vision to cases with a good prognosis and significantly improve it in many others, something that was previously impossible. They are complex techniques «that have had a long learning curve, but we are now able to perform them with very high quality,» explains Dr. Giménez, head of the cornea section of the Ophthalmology service at the University Hospital Complex of Cartagena.
In addition to these advanced transplant techniques, «the use of intra-stromal rings and crosslinking treatment for corneal ectasias has been introduced in the section, a common pathology, where previously the only solution in this area was complete corneal transplantation in advanced cases, with the poor visual prognosis that entailed.»
Giménez emphasizes that «the great advance for the cornea section has been the learning of lamellar transplants such as the ‘DMEK’ and DALK techniques, which are more complex lamellar transplants where only a few microns of corneal thickness are transplanted.»
CORNEA SECTION
The Ophthalmology service of the University Hospital Complex of Cartagena created a cornea section in 2022 to treat complex cases. For this purpose, the health area equipped the consultations with a state-of-the-art topographer to diagnose corneal diseases and built a specific ophthalmologic surgical block at the Rosell Hospital with state-of-the-art microscopes and intraoperative optical coherence tomography.
This allows the section to continue advancing in the performance of new surgical techniques that will help respond to the increasing ophthalmological pathology generated by the aging population and the emergence and development of surgical procedures for previously untreatable pathologies.
