A one-month-old baby, diagnosed with cataract, was successfully operated by Suparna, a specialist in paediatric ophthalmology, and her team, at Sankar Foundation Super-speciality Eye Hospital here.
The baby was delivered at INHS Kalyani Hospital and the doctors there had recognised that the baby was not responding to the torch light beam, flashed in his left eye. The parents were in for a shock on coming to know that their baby was having a problem in her left eye and had to be referred to the Sankar Foundation immediately.
“In paediatric cataract cases, the surgery has to be done as soon as possible. But, we had to wait for one month as giving anaesthesia to an infant poses a major risk. We performed the surgery one month ago but getting the boy’s vision was another challenge. We asked the parents to perform vision exercises at home on their child,” Dr. Suparna told The Hindu on Friday.
“The eye of the boy, with normal vision, had to be closed while the operated eye has to be kept open. The parents were asked to flash torchlight in that eye after every one hour to activate his vision. The boy used to respond by smiling at his parents and this indicates that he has regained his vision in the operated eye. The amount of vision gained will be known only after his vision is tested after a couple of years,” she said.
Dr. Suparna says that the chances of regaining vision in unilateral cataract(one eye cataract) was very limited and expressed happiness that this boy was able to follow the objects with the operated eye. She said that after the baby turns three-years-old, he would be operated again for implantation of Intra Ocular Lens (IOL). The parents expressed their joy on their child getting back his vision in the left eye after the surgery and their gratitude to Sankar Foundation.
K.B.N. Manimala, Managing Trustee and CEO, commended Dr. Suparna and her team for the successful surgery.
