Nearly half the corneas harvested in the State are unfit for transplant due to delay in extraction or disease.
Telangana leads the country in eye donations collections. For the current year, the State has already collected 5,562 eyes as against a target of 3,400 under the National Programme for Control of Blindness. Telangana is the lone State to have already met its annual target in the country.
According to the Health and Family Welfare Department, willingness to donate eyes has increased manifold in recent years but not many know of the short time-window for donation. As a result, about 50 % of the corneas are rendered unfit for transplant.
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Time-window
A senior doctor at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, where the utilisation of cornea for transplant stand higher than the State’s average at 60 %, said time after death is crucial for a viable corneal transplant.
“According to guidelines we follow, the donor’s eyes have to be extracted within an eight-hour window if the body is not preserved or 12 hours if preserved. However, the sooner the eyes are extracted the more likely the cornea will be suitable for transplant,” he said. Donations coordinated and received by LVPEI account for nearly two-third of the State’s statistics, helping Telangana to achieve its annual target.
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Doctors also say sepsis, viral infections, ventilation in hospital setting and metabolic conditions that a patient has not been diagnosed with, often renders the cornea unfit for transplant after removal. Along with rest of the eye, corneas that are not used for transplant at an eye bank are used for research purposes.
Though problems of cornea account for a small proportion of avoidable blindness in the country, with cataract and refractive errors causing a bulk of the cases, it comes in the way of Telangana’s plans to make entire villages blindness free. The State tied-up with non-governmental organisations earlier this year and has been conducting eye-camps in mission mode in 225 villages across four districts of erstwhile Mahabubnagar district. This pilot experiment is soon set to be expanded to rest of the State.