Docs slice cornea to give to 2 patients

CHENNAI: When K Usha Devi's son called the eye bank to donate his mother's eyes after her death, little did he realise that the eyes would be able to give the gift of vision to four blind persons instead of two.

Opthalmologists in the city say that they have now been using the hard-to-get cornea judiciously. Each cornea is now being sliced up with laser into two to help restore vision in two persons. "Awareness about eye donation is still low. We will have to make use of the scare resources. And we are doing our best," says Opthalmologist Dr Amar Agarwal of the Agarwal Eye Hospitals.

Statistics explain what doctors mean. At 15 million, India has one of world's largest number of blind people. But vision could be restored in several people through corneal transplants, where doctors replace the damaged cornea with a healthy one. While India needs 2.5 lakh donated eyes every year, statistics show that the country's 109 eye banks manage to collect just 25,000 eyes, 30% of which can't be used. Annually, the country does less than 10,000 corneal transplants.

A person sees when light passes through the cornea and falls on retina. Sometimes the cornea becomes opaque or loses its transparency following trauma, infection or other disease. A person with an opaque cornea cannot see. Such people would require a corneal transplant. "But donations don't match the demand. Thanks to technology, we are able to help more people. What we now do is screen the cornea and identify which portion is damaged. The entire cornea is replaced only when there is a complete damage. Else, we replace either the front or the inner side of the cornea," he said.

Such surgeries, they say, also require high degree of expertise. "But the advantage of the this procedures is that you allow the patient to retain a part of his own cornea," said Dr Geetha Krishna, cornea consultant at Sankara Nethralaya.

Doctors are also using techniques that would make the surgery sutureless. "Inside the eye, sutures can cause infection or lead to refractive errors . When we avoid suture, such problems can be avoided," says Dr Sujatha Mohan of Rajan Eye Care.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Now-docs-slice-up-1-corn...