Dr. Anastasios Charonis Anastasios Charonis MD, PhD is the medical director of the Hellenic Eye Institute and Day Surgery Unit Athensvision, which operates in Athens-Greece since 2006. In 2014 DrCharonis filed for 3 personal patents involving keratoplasty surgery, the T-Anchor keratoplasty double ring that secures the graft to the host without sutures and the Zero gravity Keratoplasty system that allows an endoscopical pressurized approach to keratoplasty. He is also the inventor of a temporary keratoprosthesis device that allows Vitrectomy without a pars plana approach and is the inventor of the world’s first corneal supported intraocular lens.He is a founding member of the Hellenic EyeBankDemokritosGrigorisGeorgariou.(1st Prize winner of the SFEE innovationproject 2.0 start up competition 2014)
Corneal transplantation surgery has been successful for over a century. Nevertheless the surgical procedure, optical outcomes and the risk of rejection have essentially remained unchanged in the last 40 years. A reevaluation of the surgical techniques will be discussed in order to maximize outcomes, predictability and efficacy of the procedure. We will present a novel concept: “the tire in the rim” approach which offers infinite pointsof sutureless structural support of the graft and the host cornea and the world’s first graft supported intraocular lens, artificial iris and pressure monitor composite (the Chandelier lens) which were developed in Greece by the DemokritosEyebank start up , the Hellenic Eyebank“GrigorisGeorgariou”. We will also discuss the enormous possibilities in corneal bioengineering in Demokritos including ex vivo corneal stemcell and endothelial cell culturing and the possibility of augmenting our research horizons by participating in the COST action BM 1302 (Cooperation in Science and Technology-Corneal Regeneration) collaborative project.