CHENNAI: Over 18 million people in the country are visually impaired, of which 55 per cent lose vision owing to cataract, according to Dr Amar Agarwal, Secretary-General, Indian Intraocular Implant and Refractive Society, India (IIRSI).
He said this to newspersons on the sidelines of a two-day convention that was organised by the IIRSI in Chennai on Saturday.
Dr Amar further said that to solve the problem of blindness because of cataract, there were new techniques like Pre-Descemet Endothelial Keratoplasty (PDEK) and Glued Intraocular Lens (IOL).
He said, “Dr Agarwal Eye Hospital takes pride to have invented PDEK and Glued IOL techniques. In PDEK, only 22 micron of cornea tissue is taken from the donor and implanted in the blind person’s eye to restore vision, whereas in the Glued IOL procedure, cataract is removed and lens are fixed in the eyes with the glue made of human blood. The innovations will help reduce blindness.”
Speaking after inaugurating the convention, State Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr C Vijaya Baskar said, “Chennai is one of the forerunners in the world, attracting international patients to medical tourism. This is because of the contribution of doctors in the city.”
“They (doctors) are making the health sector one of the fastest growing enterprises in the country,” he added
The convention saw doctors from Iran, the US, Africa and Germany etc and over 2,000 ophthalmologists on the first day of the conference.
Live surgeries using the new techniques and others were performed for the surgeons to learn the latest advancement in ophthalmology, which were telecast live from Agarwal Eye Hospital.
‘Optical Coherence Tomography in Ocular Diseases,’ a book authored by Dr Amar Agarwal, was released on the occasion. Also, gold medals were also presented to Dr S Badrinath of Sankara Nethralaya, Dr Theo Seiler from Switzerland and Dr Daniel Durrie from the US for their contribution to ophthalmology. Prince of Arcot Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali also spoke.