A retinal transplant is not a routine surgery that can replace a damaged retina today. However, doctors can move retinal tissue in some unusual cases. In July 2026, surgeons in Turin, Italy, reported a world-first operation that moved the macula from one of a patient’s eyes to the other.
Bottom line: Retinal tissue can be moved in limited situations, but doctors still cannot routinely replace a damaged retina with a healthy one.
Doctors cannot remove a damaged retina and replace it with a healthy donor retina as a standard treatment. But that does not mean retinal tissue has never been transplanted.
Small pieces of a patient’s own retina have been used for certain difficult macular holes. The Turin case was different because surgeons moved the central part of the retina from one eye to the other.
| Type | What It Means | Available Today? |
|---|---|---|
| Donor retina replacement | Replacing a damaged retina with a healthy donor retina. | No standard surgery is available. |
| Own-retina graft | Moving a small piece of the patient’s retina to help close a difficult macular hole. | Used in selected difficult cases. |
| 2026 Turin transplant | Moving the macula and other eye tissues from one eye to the other. | World-first case with no routine treatment pathway. |
The patient was a 67-year-old woman who had been blind for more than five years after a serious car crash. Her two eyes had very different types of damage.
Her left optic nerve was permanently damaged, so that eye could no longer send useful visual signals to the brain. However, several structures inside the eye remained healthy.
Her right optic nerve still worked, but the retina and cornea had been badly damaged. The right eye also had a macular condition before the crash.
The useful parts were divided between the two eyes. The left eye had healthy tissue but a damaged optic nerve. The right eye still had a working optic nerve but badly damaged eye structures.
Surgeons at Molinette Hospital used tissue from the left eye to reconstruct the right eye. Because the tissue came from the same patient, this was an autotransplant rather than a donor transplant.
The transferred tissue included the cornea, sclera, conjunctiva, and macula. The macula is the small central part of the retina that helps provide detailed straight-ahead vision.
This is an important detail behind the headlines. Doctors did not remove and replace the entire retina. They moved its central portion along with several other eye tissues.
For a simple visual sense of how changes in the retina can affect sight, you can see how common eye diseases can affect vision in our vision simulator.
The Turin surgery was a world first, but retinal tissue had been transplanted before.
Doctors have used small pieces of a patient’s own retina to help close large or difficult macular holes. Published studies involving multiple patients predate the 2026 Turin operation.
What made the Turin surgery different was moving the central retina from one eye to the other. Surgeons also transferred major tissues from the front of the eye at the same time.
That distinction matters. Saying this was simply the first retinal transplant would make the breakthrough sound broader than it actually was.
Not as a standard treatment. The Turin patient had an unusual combination of damage that gave surgeons healthy tissue in one eye and a working optic nerve in the other.
That does not create a normal list of candidates or a procedure that most eye centers can now offer. It is one unusual case with encouraging early results.
Long-term results will also matter. A successful first operation does not yet tell us how well the transplanted tissue will work years later or how often a similar approach could succeed.
No. The operation does not create a new general treatment for macular degeneration, diabetic retinal disease, retinal detachment, or other common retina problems.
The surgery was designed around the patient’s unique injuries to both eyes. That makes it very different from treating a retinal condition in an otherwise functioning eye.
The important part is not that retina replacement has suddenly become available. It is that surgeons successfully moved the central retina between two eyes as part of a much larger reconstruction.
Early reports said the transplanted tissues had attached and the patient regained useful vision. That gives researchers and surgeons a real case to follow rather than only a theoretical possibility.
Many questions remain, including who else might ever be a candidate and how durable the visual improvement will be. For now, the operation expands what may be surgically possible without changing routine retinal care.
So, can you get a retina transplant? Not as a routine replacement for a damaged retina. Retinal tissue can be moved in specialized situations, and the 2026 Turin operation showed that even the central retina can be transferred between a patient’s own eyes under extraordinary circumstances.
That makes the case an important surgical milestone, not a treatment most patients can request today. If unusual sight-restoring procedures interest you, you can also read about rare tooth-in-eye surgery, which restores vision in a very different way.
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