Sankara Eye Hospital has now opened a dedicated centre for oncology care. The new centre known as ‘Krishnarpanam’ Naraindas Morbai Budhrani Trust Sankara Ocular Oncology Centre will offer  chemotherapy, ruthenium 106 brachytherapy, transpupillary thermotherapy (slit-lamp and indirect ophthalmoscope delivery) in addition to cryotherapy and laser photocoagulation and surgical resection of tumours for patients with ocular tumours. There is also a Occularistry Clinic which would enable rehabilitating these patients with cosmetic eye shells.

Brachytherapy technique is suitable for small or medium-sized eye melanomas and also for lymphoma of the eye, which are common forms of cancer. It is given via a small operation under general anaesthesia with small radioactive seeds or plaques placed over the tumour that attack and kill the cancer cells. The plaques usually stay in place for 7 days and then removed, with the patient staying in the hospital for that period.

According to Dr R V Ramani, founder and managing trustee, Sankara Eye Care Institutions, over 150 patients with eye cancer in the last two years were treated by Dr Mahesh P Shanmugam, head, department of Vitreo-Retinal Head. With the introduction of brachytherapy, the hospital now has a comprehensive facility to treat patients. In this technique, the radiation does not penetrate too deep into the eye, thus preventing damage of other tissues and retaining the vision. It also has minimum or almost nil side-effects.

Symptoms of retinoblastoma may include leukocoria (white pupil), strabismus (Squint eyes), eye pain and different coloured pupil in each eye. Among adults it may vary based on the type of cancer, the symptoms can be blurred vision, floaters, change in iris colour of dark spots on iris, red and/or painful eye, bulging eye and loss of peripheral vision. In adults, there are often no symptoms in the early stages of most eye cancers. It may be discovered during a routine eye examination.

In some cases it is hereditary, but majority of the cases there is no family history. However, siblings and children of patients should be examined periodically and timely treatment sought to avoid further progress of the disease. Underprivileged children would be provided free treatment under the ‘Nanna Kannu’ Comprehensive Eye Care Programme of the Sankara Eye Hospital.

The hospital which is a unit of Coimbatore based Sankara Eye Care Institutions, kicked off its operations in Bangalore in March 2008 to offer affordable high quality eye care to the economically underprivileged populations. It adopts the 80:20 patient ratio, where-in the 20 per cent are paid patients and the 80 per cent belong to the economically underprivileged class and are treated free.

As part of the community eye care services in the remote areas, several programmes in detecting and eradicating preventable blindness have been carried out. In Karnataka, the hospital has centres in Bangalore and Shimoga provide quality eye care to 13 districts covering South and Central parts of the state. Over 60,000 vision-restoring procedures have been performed successfully.

For its services, the eye care major bagged the ‘Namma Bengaluru Award 2010’ in February, India NGO Award 2008 and the Hospital Management Asia Award 2008 and the FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards in September 2009and September 2010.