An acid attack victim’s eye has been saved by a donated placenta.
Battery acid was squirted in the face of Paul Laskey, 43, after his 16 year old son was mugged at knifepoint.
His left eye ‘melted’ away after the attack and his vision was saved by a ‘life-changing’ medical procedure using a donated placenta.
When the plumber and heating engineer went to apprehend his son’s mugger in Newcastle on February 5 2023, he was squirted in the face with a corrosive acid.
‘I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe. It took my breathe away with how strong it was. I felt burning on my face.’ He told Metro UK.
‘I wasn’t in a lot of pain because it had burnt through all the nerves.’
Paul added: ‘It was horrendous. I was off work for the first six months. It was all that was on my mind. It was just awful.’
Paul required intensive care and over the course of a year he received two cornea transplants from donated eyes, as well as ‘essential’ treatment from a donated placenta.
From the placenta, doctors used an amnion graft, which comes from the inner lining of the organ.
The ‘sticky’ and almost transparent substance seals itself against the eye, which helped to heal surface damage and cover nerve endings.
The 43-year-old went through went through this procedure three times, including the first a week after the attack, stopping his sight from deteriorating and stabilising the eye.
Due to the success of these amnion grafts, doctors are now planning further stem cell treatment to give Paul more sight back in his left eye.
