India's first non-invasive corneal transplant conducted

Chennai, Sep 5 (UNI) Eminent opthalmologist Dr Amar Agarwal of the Agarwal's Eye Hospital has successfully performed India's first non-invasive corneal transplant on a 12-year-old girl and her seven-year old brother using Intralase Laser.

The boy, Sanjay and his sister Sangeetha (12) were suffering from a peculiar disease called Corneal Dystrophy, a condition where the eye becomes very sensitive towards light.

Hospital Joint Managing Director Dr Amar Agarwal studied their vision pattern and performed Corneal Transplant using the Intralase Laser method. Both the children now enjoy almost normal vision, Talking to reporters, Dr Amar said both Sanjay and Sangeetha, who had normal vision upto the age of five years and started losing their vision gradually.

By the age of 12, Sangeetha completely lost her eyesight and Sanjay was also entering the advance stage of corneal dystrophy when they approached the Hospital.

The 12-year-old girl's whole cornea was damaged so the entire cornea was transplanted. Only a part of the seven-year-old boy's cornea was damaged and hence only a part of the cornea was replaced.

Speaking about the surgery, Dr Amar Agarwal said ''by using this laser, a high precise incision can be created resulting in a perfect match of the donor thereby improving the quality of the sight''.

''Intralase laser enables us to slice out a cornea from an eye, which can be used on multiple patients depending upon the deformity.

This blade-free approach will also help the patients to recover faster'', he added.

''In India, there are about 15,000 eyes donated and the requirement is 25 lakh eyes. With the help of this technology, we can bring down the blindness ratio in India to a greater extent'', he added.

UNI