Scientists have created a new artificial cornea which will act like a contact lens. The cornea has been made by stitching a long piece of collagen into the eye.

This new medical breakthrough will be beneficial for almost 10 million people who are suffering from corneal.

As many as 10 patients who had significant vision loss underwent biosynthetic collagen-based corneal implants. After the transplant, it was noticed that the mean contact lens-corrected visual acuity was 20/42 as compared to
20/43 eyeglass-corrected acuity for those patients who had human corneal transplants.

The chief of cornea transplant at Duke University's eye centre, Dr. Alan Carlson, said that this new transplant procedure will certainly bring a new lease of life in those patients who have lost their sights due to cornea damage.

Scientists said that lengthy steroid immunosuppression is also not required in patients receiving the biosynthetic cornea. So far, no complaints of discomfort have been noted.

At present, human corneal transplantation is widely done, but the process has some disadvantages like the patient can get infection from the donor, long-term steroid treatment is required, and sometimes there can be acute shortage of donors.