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Throughout 2005, the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) commemorated the centennial of the first corneal transplant performed by Eduard Zirm, MD, in what is now the Czech Republic.
Eduard Zirm, born in 1863 in Vienna, Austria, attended the University of Vienna where he studied medicine. Dr. Zirm worked in ophthalmology at Vienna Univ-Augenklinik and was eventually offered a position at a newly formed eye clinic in a rural area of Austria (now the Czech Republic). While there, he founded what would become the largest eye clinic in the area. During his years in practice, Zirm conducted thousands of cataract surgeries along with a number of cornea transplants.
In 1904, Alois Glogar, from a small town in what is now the Czech Republic, experienced burns to both of his eyes, leaving him blind due to the corneal injury.
A year later, Glogar was brought to Dr. Zirm's clinic-while at the same time an 11 year-old boy, Karl Brauer, was in an accident which left him with metal pieces in his eye. Attempts to save Brauer's eye were unsuccessful. Dr. Zirm then enucleated the damaged eye-removing the corneal tissue for transplantation into Glogar's eyes. While complications resulted in one of Glogar's eyes, the other eye remained clear-allowing him to see and return to work.
To recognize this momentous occasion, the EBAA held a celebration during the World Cornea Congress, in April 2005.
Photos provided by
"The first successful organ transplant performed by
Dr. Eduard Konrad Zirm - December 7, 1905," n.d.,<http://www.drzirm.org/eindex.html> (December 1, 2004).
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