In June 2024, a sudden sports injury left Evan Facher lying on the ground, bleeding in incredible pain. The outer wall of his eye, he would later learn, had ruptured. The lens, the clear disc that focuses incoming light toward the back, was destroyed. The retina \u2014 the irreplaceable link between the eye and the optic nerve \u2014 was hanging in the balance, peeling away from its blood supply. And the iris, the pigmented ring encircling the pupil, was torn apart, a fraction of its former self.<\/p>\n
As the Pitt\u2019s vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pittsburgh and an associate dean for commercial translation at the School of Medicine, Facher already had intimate knowledge of the UPMC Vision Institute prior to that pivotal day. He helps shepherd new discoveries along the path to the clinic, work that has brought him to many exciting projects with Pitt ophthalmologists and other researchers. Now, he would come to be shepherded himself, as a frequent visitor to the Vision Institute\u2019s home at UPMC Mercy Pavilion in Uptown Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Through a series of delicate procedures, surgeons across multiple ophthalmic specialties collaborated to save Facher\u2019s eye. They repaired his ruptured globe. They rescued his precariously peeling-away retina. Then, the team made plans for a third surgery: They would replace his lost lens with a prosthetic, the same kind used every day as a surgical cure for cataracts. And finally, in the same surgery, they would also do something quite uncommon.<\/p>\n
They would implant an artificial iris \u2014 a first for UPMC, and for Western Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
[Read more about Facher\u2019s journey<\/a>.]<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very excited to begin offering this to our patients. For people with very severe injuries like this, the artificial iris implant can be transformative,\u201d said Jos\u00e9-Alain Sahel<\/a>, Distinguished Professor and The Eye and Ear Foundation Endowed Chair in Pitt\u2019s Department of Ophthalmology and director of the UPMC Vision Institute.<\/p>\n