Sandalwood Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar's eye donation: Successful corneal transplant at Narayana Nethralaya

Bangalore: Dr. K Bhujang Shetty, Chairman & Managing Director, Narayana Nethralaya today uncovered the successful corneal transplant at Narayana Nethralaya of the generous donation by Puneeth Rajkumar The Sandalwood Power Star.

What he said, read below:

'We are very fortunate and grateful to have received Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar’s eye donation. What was unique is that we used each eye to treat two patients by separating the superior and deeper layers of the cornea. The superior layer was transplanted to two patients who had superficial corneal disease and only the deeper layer was transplanted to patients with endothelial or deep corneal layer disease. Hence, we created four different transplants from two corneas to restore vision for four different patients. This has not been done in our state to best of our knowledge.

The procedures performed were two different techniques of lamellar keratoplasty

1. Deep Anterior Lamellar Keratoplasty (DALK) – the outer or superficial part of cornea was transplanted for two young patients with corneal dystrophy and keratoconus. Both these conditions affect predominantly the superficial layer of the cornea, while the deeper part of the eye is normal. Hence, only the superior part was replaced and the endothelium of the patient was retained. This greatly reduces the chance of graft rejection.

2. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSEK) – inner or deeper layer of the cornea is transplanted for two patients with corneal endothelial decompensation affecting the inner most layer of the cornea. In this procedure, only the endothelium is replaced and usually done with a small incision and few sutures. This avoids full thickness cornea transplant, is more comfortable for the patient and allows faster recovery.

3. Besides this, the limbal rim (white part of the eye near the circumference of the cornea) which was not used for the transplants, has been sent to our laboratory to generate ‘Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells’ for potential use in patients with Limbal Stem Cell deficiency, chemical injuries, acid burns and other serious disorders.

4. The surgeries were performed by Dr. Yathish Shivanna, Dr. Sharon D’Souza and Dr. Harsha Nagaraj, under the leadership of Dr. Rohit Shetty and supported by the rest of the cornea team, Dr. Gairik Kundu and Mr. Veeresh.

Gp Capt (Retd) S K Mittal VSM, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Yathish Shivanna, Medical Director, Dr. Rajkumar Eye Bank; Dr. Sharon D'Souza Senior Consultant,  Cornea & Refractive and Dr. Prarthana Bhandary Senior Consultant,  Cornea & Refractive were present at the press conference.

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