Youth’s cornea returns sight to 2 senior citizens

Two senior citizens regained their eyesight from a single cornea of an 18-year-old boy who was declared brain dead after he met with an accident on January 12.

Both the recipients, aged 62 and 70 respectively, got operated on last Saturday at Ojas Eye clinic at Bandra after collecting the cornea tissue of the child on January 14. What makes the surgery unique is that one cornea was used for two patients by a recent technique of lamellar keratoplasty.

“Cornea has five layers. In a corneal transplant, a disc-shaped segment of an unhealthy cornea is replaced with a similarly shaped piece of healthy donor cornea. However, in this we rectify the useless layer. We replace the good donor tissue with the useless one. Hence, out of five layers, three were given to one donor and two were to another. This helps us in curbing the wastage of tissues,” said Dr Hardik Parikh, ophthal surgeon of Ojas.

“This technique helps in bridging the gap between the demand and supply of cornea transplant. Also, it limits the wastage of any cornea layer,” said Dr Parikh.

After the surgery, both the patients have regained their eyesight. “The first patient, 62, underwent partial thickness/lamellar corneal transplant called DSEK where only the inner diseased layers are replaced by similar healthy layers from donor eye. Now, she is fine and her vision is clear. The second patient underwent partial thickness/lamellar corneal transplant. It is called deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK),” said Dr Nitin Dedhia from the clinic.