For the first time on record, Italian doctors have transplanted the central part of the retina, the macula, The result was that the patient had her sight restored, after having been blind for five years, a hospital in Turin has announced.

The 67-year-old patient, named Elena, lost her vision in a serious car accident that caused irreversible damage to the optic nerve in her left eye, meaning light could no longer reach the brain even though the eye’s structures themselves stayed intact, according to Turin’s Molinette Hospital.

Her right eye, meanwhile, already affected by macular degeneration, had suffered irreversible damage to both the retina and cornea. The hospital said the complete destruction of the tissue containing the eye’s stem cells made a standard cornea transplant impossible, effectively condemning the patient to permanent blindness.

That obstacle, until now considered insurmountable, was overcome by Professor Michele Reibaldi and his team. Drawing on the healthy but no-longer-functional tissue in Elena’s left eye, the surgeons removed and transplanted into her right eye a complete anatomical unit, the cornea, sclera, and conjunctiva, along with, for the first time anywhere, the retina’s central section, the macula. In effect, they built one working eye out of two damaged ones.

Reibaldi said in the hospital’s statement that the team is now waiting to see how well the transplanted retina will function, though the early results are encouraging, adding that the operation was highly complex and took nearly six hours.

French ophthalmologist Michel Paques, head of the eye department at Paris’s Quinze-Vingts National Hospital and a specialist in retinal disease, confirmed to AFP that having sight restored this was was a global first.

He noted that without published studies, it isn’t yet possible to objectively assess the technique the Italian surgeons used, or whether other patients might benefit from it in the future.