EDMONTON – The wait times for cornea transplants in Alberta are longer than anywhere else in Canada, but the province will now import corneas to reduce patients’ waits.
“After the operation, it’s like normal,” said 74-year-old Bob Sage. “I can drive at night, it’s amazing… amazing!”
Sage was on the waiting list for a cornea transplant for his right eye, and now he’s on the list again for his left eye.
Albertans spend between two and three years on a waiting list for the vision-restoring procedure, which is more than twice as long as people in Manitoba and five times longer than those in British Columbia.
Currently, there are about 500 people on the wait list in Alberta.
In March, Health Minister Fred Horne asked his department to review the situation, which he thought could be due to a supply shortage, since Alberta has not imported corneas from the United States.
(Read the full plan below).
On Wednesday, Global News learned the province will now import corneas from eye banks in B.C. and the U.S. in order to reduce those wait times.
“There’s been a very long waiting list for cornea surgery,” explained ophthalmologist David Climenhaga. “Over the next year-and-a-half we will be trying to shorten the waiting list from what is approximately three years right now to somewhere in the realm of 14 weeks. That’s the goal, so it’s a dramatic decrease.”
Starting in October, the province plans to have nearly 325 additional procedures performed within 18 months. The government’s goal is to reduce wait times from three years to 14 weeks by March 31, 2015.
“In Edmonton… we will be completing 100 cornea transplants before March 31,” said Climenhaga, who has performed roughly 2,000 cornea transplants in his 25 year career, including Sage’s.
“We made about three appointments, and the last one that I went in he said ‘you’re blind.’ I drove down so I said, ‘I’m not blind.’”
However, after the three-hour operation, which Sage described as “painless” and “interesting,” he had changed his tune.
“It’s absolutely amazing. I was blind,” he said. “I had to be blind, because I can see now. It really worked well.”
“I’m still working, I still enjoy life. I can see myself at home with no eyesight, and I wouldn’t last very long, I’m sure.”
“I can see, which is really important, and I imagine other people out there probably need it worse than I do.”
A single cornea from the U.S. can cost somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000. The plan will cost about $1.46 million this year and $1.61 million next year. The province said the money is already in the Alberta Health Services budget, and it is just being reallocated.
Raw video: inside the operating room
However, the opposition is calling for a more permanent solution to what it feels is a growing health issue.
“We’ve been fighting very hard to get corneas imported into the province of Alberta,” said NDP Health Critic David Eggen. “We had this huge backlog. So, I’m very happy to see that this is a development, but we don’t want this to be an ad hock solution based on a crisis that accumulated over time. We need to have a formalized fund that’s available to pay for the corneas.”
Eggen would prefer to see a more proactive approach.
“We know that this need will only grow over time because of the larger population here in the province and the aging population too.”
The province said the long-term plan is to increase donation within Alberta. It plans to use educational campaigns as part of end-of-life care, public awareness campaigns in high schools, and information materials in doctors’ offices.
In addition, it plans to create a provincial donor registry and making it easier for Albertans to sign up to donate. Both elements of legislation are expected to pass this fall and be implemented in early 2014.
“I believe there are many, many thousands of Albertans who will come forward once we’ve done that and say ‘I’m ready. What do I need to do?’ And we’ll be there with an answer, whether it’s online or whether it’s when you renew your driver’s license,” added Horne.
Currently, Alberta has one of the lowest ocular donation rates in the country; 28 donors per million population. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of ocular donors in Calgary and Edmonton dropped by about 15 per cent.
“I would love to see 60, 70, 80 per cent of Albertans making that decision to make that gift of life or the gift of sight,” said Health Minister Fred Horne.
“I think we can do that if we focus on giving people the information they need to decide and then making it easy for them, when they’ve made the decision, to register that intent.”
Corneal disease is the third most common cause of recoverable blindness in Canada, and the most common cause of visual handicap in people under 30 years of age.
With files from Vassy Kapelos, Global News
The Alberta government’s plan to reduce corneal transplant wait times.
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