'It's like a knife scraping across my eye'

A patient has told of her agonising wait for a cornea transplant, as the NHS faces a national shortage of donors.

Janis, from Sheffield, who did not want to give her surname, has been on the waiting list for corneal replacement for a year, and said she faced a further two-year delay.

She told the BBC: "It can be very sore and painful, sometimes like a knife scraping across my eye. Then all I can do is lie down in the dark and not move my eyes."

The NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) service said just under 4,000 patients were currently waiting for a corneal transplant, while 1,000 had been waiting for more than a year.

Janis, who suffered damage to her eye caused by a virus two years ago, uses eye drops, ointments and other medication - but was told a transplant was the only way to permanently repair her eye.

She said: "It's the pain that really gets to me.

"I can't do anything for very long.

"I used to read a lot but now it just hurts my eyes after 10 minutes.

"And a really bright day hurts my eyes if I leave the house."

The cornea is the clear layer at the front of the eyeball which helps to focus light onto the retina at the back of the eye.

The NHS says the transplant surgery usually takes less than an hour.

Janis said both eyes watered all the time "so it's quite difficult to see", and that she had fallen going down steps.

She said: "I'd like to visit my son abroad but even leaving the house is difficult let alone visiting family abroad."

She said she could no longer use her laptop or sewing machine.

"It's just awful," she said.

"The trouble is if you've always been used to having good sight, you haven't got the skills to deal with it, you have to build that up slowly.

"It's hard."

Janis praised the NHS and said Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital was "wonderful" and "second to none".

But she said "staff just don't know why no corneas are coming through", adding: "It has impacted my life an awful lot."

According to the NHSBT service:

• More people can donate corneas than organs
• Corneas can be donated up to 24 hours after death
• NHSBT works with Hospice UK to promote cornea donation
• Corneas do not contain blood vessels so even former cancer patients can potentially donate
• About 350 corneas are needed at any one time to meet demand, but only about 200 are currently available

The health service said the shortage was made worse by the fact both donation and surgery had reduced during the pandemic.

"The only way to address the issue is for more people to agree to donate their corneas after death," it said.

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