Gift of vision: Eye transplants give new lease of life to hundreds at AIIMS’ Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences
NEW DELHI: About five years ago, the waiting period for general patients in need of an eye transplant was three years.
Things have, however, changed now thanks to advancement in technology at Dr Rajendra Prasad Center for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS. The waiting period has now been reduced to just a few days.
“The Dr R P Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS is performing a whopping 115-120 eye surgeries per day,” Professor Shakti Kumar Gupta, Medical Superintendent of the Dr RP Center, told Millennium Post.
During the foundation day celebrations of the Centre, which was held on Friday, Prof Gupta said that the Centre is equipped with “the apex facility for ophthalmic care in the country and it has treated nearly 2,12,370 in the year 2016, which is a big number in itself.”
Chairman of the National Eye Bank, Dr Jeewan S Titiyal, said that AIIMS has collected 23,000 corneas and conducted more than 16,000 corneal transplant surgeries in the last 50 years.
“We have received eyes from about 23,000 donors at the Eye Bank, out of which more than 16,000 were used for transplant surgeries. In the last one year, we have performed about 1,000 transplantation surgeries,” he Gupta.
Cornea is the transparent tissue that covers the eye and allows light to enter the eyeball and performs two-thirds of the focusing tasks.
For people suffering from vision loss, due to irreparable damage of the tissue, a transplant is the only option.
An eye transplant involves replacing a diseased or scarred cornea with a donor graft.
According to ophthalmologists at the R P Centre, eye transplants are mainly in need among the elderly – particularly those who have failed to regain proper vision in spite of cataract surgery.
They are followed by adults – who suffer from blindness due to trauma or infection – and children born with corneal opacity.
Experts say that with India’s 1.2 crore vision-impaired people, there is a requirement of at least two lakh donor corneas annually.