The L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) has performed 2,043 corneal transplants in a single year spanning between April 2016 and March 2017. This is a record for the highest ever corneal transplant surgeries from a single centre, anywhere in the world performed at its Hyderabad campus.
Since its inception, the institute's Hyderabad campus has notched up over 23,901 corneal transplant surgeries thus far. The Ramayamma International Eye Bank at the campus harvested a whopping 7166 corneas this financial year, and distributed 3,810 corneas to corneal surgeons across the country, according to the Institute.
Corneal disease is a major cause of blindness in India. Of the 10 million blind in India, 1.1 million are blind in both eyes due to corneal disease, injury or infection. An estimated 80 per cent of blindness globally could either be prevented or treated. The dedicated Ophthalmic Cornea Institute at LVPEI –the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute has enabled the team to invest in research of new materials and application techniques to eliminate corneal blindness. Corneal transplantation is the only known cure for corneal blindness, which is made possible by the donation of healthy corneas by individuals upon their death.
“Organ donation is a major challenge in India, and to achieve this world record, while we are still creating awareness about eye donation, is even more commendable. This achievement should help raise the confidence that organ donation and transplantation in India can potentially touch record volumes, given a dedicated team approach and strategy,” said Dr. Gullapalli N Rao, Founder and Chair, L V Prasad Eye Institute.
” The cornea team at LVPEI has contributed to the evolution of modern eye banking and specialized cornea care in India. “This is an ongoing process in our efforts to create more milestones in the coming years towards our mission of alleviating avoidable blindness in India and the world,” he added.
A whole gamut of specialized activities at the backend go into achieving the remarkable world record outcomes at LVPEI. These include creating social awareness regarding eye donation. Initiatives like the first Hospital Cornea Retrieval Program that involves counselors to be trained and placed in large multispecialty hospitals, which was first started at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), has resulted in significantly higher yields of donor tissues. Fellowship training for ophthalmologists, and eye bank training programs for technicians, counselors and managers, cost-effective in house manufacture, indigenous storage medium to preserve the harvested corneas that is supplied by LVPEI to all eye banks across India and the neighbouring countries besides use of such as the Specular Microscope to evaluate donor tissue’s suitability for transplantation are some of the efforts that enabled the service, said the Institute.
It also houses Asia-Pacific region’s first ‘Pre-cut’ tissue centre that reduces overall cost and improves quality of transplantations. The experts have also lobbied with the (policy makers to influence better standards of eye banking in India, publishing peer reviewed papers on outcomes and making international presentations.