AAO 2026: What the first whole eye transplant has taught surgeons

An eye transplanted from a donor can be reperfused and remain functional within the recipient, but restoring sight will depend on overcoming optic nerve damage, according to Vaidehi Dedania, MD, an associate professor of ophthalmology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York, New York. At the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) 2026 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dedania spoke with Ophthalmology Times about her presentation, “Experience With Human Eye Transplant in the Context of Hemifacial Transplant.” The talk is part of the symposium “VISION for THEA: Breakthroughs Toward Total Human Eye Transplant.”

Dedania reviews NYU Langone Health’s experience with the first whole eye transplant in a human, performed in May 2023, including why and how the procedure succeeded and how the patient is doing today. Three years after surgery, the transplanted eye is functioning, but the patient cannot see. “But it’s remarkable how the eye does function within the recipient’s body,” Dedania said.

What has been learned from the first whole eye transplant?

The experience showed that an eye can be maintained and reperfused after being moved from a donor to a recipient. Investigators also found that some photoreceptors were preserved despite ischemia, which Dedania called “quite remarkable, because it was unexpected.” The optic nerve remains the central challenge, because damage to or severing of the nerve disrupts the signal from the eye to the brain.

“How do we get to have sight? You need a signal,” Dedania said. Because the optic nerve cannot regenerate, much of the current research focuses on whether a portion of the nerve can be regenerated or whether the pathway can be bypassed to deliver sight through a functioning eye.

How many specialties does an eye transplant require?

More than 20 specialties were involved, Dedania said, including plastic and reconstructive surgery, neurosurgery, transplant surgery, pathology, radiology, and ophthalmology. Because the procedure had never been performed before, the team also had to determine which imaging techniques to use. They also had to decide whether existing image-processing algorithms needed to be modified for these patients.

For more from the meeting, visit Ophthalmology Times’ AAO 2026 coverage.