First successful corneal transplant (Zirm)
Primer trasplante de córnea con éxito (Zirm)
- Date
- 1905 · confidence high
- Place
- Olomouc, Olomouc Region, Czechia
- Credited to
- Eduard Zirm
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
A full-thickness corneal graft that restored the sight of a worker blinded by lime, using the cornea of an enucleated boy. It was the first keratoplasty with lasting success in humans.
Zirm, an Austrian, operated on 7 December 1905 at the Olomouc eye clinic (Moravia). It was not the first attempt, but the first successful one; the recipient was Alois Glogar.
What it led to
- keratoplasty as routine surgery (Filatov, Castroviejo)
- eye banks
- successful tissue transplantation in ophthalmology