16 May 2004	Sunday	25 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

PESHAWAR, May 15: Cheap lenses of Indian make and smuggled into local market have been causing various complications to the patients' eyes, ophthalmologists told Dawn here on Saturday.

"We have been receiving an increasing number of patients with eye infections who had been operated upon for cataract. Many doctors fix Indian-made intra ocular lenses (IOLs) to the patients for pecuniary gains, which more often land the patients in trouble," they said.

These lenses are fixed through specialists, but most of the people fall in the hands of untrained doctors, who create problems. The doctors, having four years training in IOLs are the qualified to fix the lenses.

Patients face problems even though the Indian lenses are fixed by specialists.

"The price of the Indian lens is between Rs300-500, whereas the original ones or those imported from the US and European countries,costbetweenRs2,000-5,000,"saidasenior ophthalmologist. According to him, the doctors charged the patients for the price of original lens, but affixed Indian ones in their eyes.

The practice is going on in all the city's hospitals, he said. These IOLs are advisable for the people of any age, but the patients should be seen by proper doctors. Basically, these are meant for those suffering from cataract, which affects their vision especially the aged people, he said. According to him, cataract is also often associated with hereditary problems.

An ophthalmologist said they been doing the operations for cataract, in which the stitches were done. In this way, the chances of bleeding and infections were more, because the patients had to come to operation theatres for removal of stitches. The stitches, he said, also caused irritation for longer period, for which the patients had to consult specialists.

But now the IOLs are affixed through specially-manufactured ultrasound machines in which the chances of infections are next to zero.

He said that there were two types of lens, ie., rigid and foldable, the latter could also be affixed through injection.

The Indian lenses, which are available over-the-counter on a dozen different names are being smuggled, but there is no check and the patients have been suffering from the last 10 years.

"There are numerous cases of complications caused by Indian lenses, but these matter are never reported," he said. He added that scientific research has proved that the Indian lenses were unsuitable. These were banned in US and European countries, he said.

The cataract lenses, are made of plastic are of two types, such as refractive which were used by the people to correct their vision, whereas coloured and therapeutic were being used for cosmetic purposes.