Like any girl her age, ten-year-old Anandi relishes a good anecdote.
But, the story of the little girl who suffered trauma in one eye in a firecracker accident is probably no less fascinating than anything she would have come across.
In fact, the innovative surgery that restored perfect vision to this Villupuram girl is now a world-famous case study as well as source material for a textbook in ophthalmology.
When Anandi first came to Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital in Chennai as a four-year-old with an injury that had completely damaged an eye, there was virtually no tissue scaffold for suturing in an intraocular lens (IOL) implant.
“In such cases, suturing in an IOL implant would have been wrought with problems ranging from shaky vision, displacement of the lens or disintegration of the suture. This girl became one of the first paediatric cases where we performed a glued IOL using gum derived from human tissue,” said Dr. Amar Agarwal, chairman and managing director of the hospital group.
The suture-free technique perfectly addresses many of the problems associated with suturing an IOL in an inadequately supported posterior chamber and the glued IOL moves in complete sync with human movement, he said.
The fibrin glued intrascleral haptic fixation of a posterior chamber IOL pioneered in Chennai is now an accepted global standard for cataract or trauma patients who lack adequate posterior chamber support for an IOL device implantation.
According to Dr. Amar, apart from trauma and cataract cases there is a third category of patients with congenitally compromised posterior chamber support for the eye lens — the offspring of consanguine parents. Invariably, these patients who have lenses that are moving all the time are ideal candidates for the procedure.
