PESHAWAR: The Khyber Teaching Hospital administration is establishing eye bank as part of its plan to expand the cornea transplantation and enable the patients to get their eyesight restored, according to sources.

They said that the hospital planned to offer MS degree in cornea transplants. The ophthalmologists want the government to send them for few week training to India to fine tune their latest skills for the benefit of the people, they added.

Since the establishment of the Medical Transplantation Regulatory Authority by the health department in February this year, about 130 cornea transplantations have been carried out at KTH where ophthalmologists are using new techniques due to which the results are satisfactory, according to doctors.

Assistant Professor Zaman Shah, who is lead cornea transplant surgeon at ophthalmology department of KTH, said that that new techniques they were using, had more than 90 per cent success rate.

KTH plans to offer MS degree in cornea transplant

“The rejection rate is higher in the old procedure but the latest technology has minimal rejection rate,” he said. He said they used deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK), pre-descemetic/manual deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (pd-DALK), descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK), descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) and bowman layer transplantation (BLT), the newest techniques, which helped the people with damaged cornea to start seeing again.

“Along with eye bank, we are also setting up wet laboratory to impart latest skills to the doctors.

The government has recognised many hospitals for cornea transplants for which we need to produce trained human resources,” said Dr Zaman Shah.

He said that as cornea was not in the list of sub-specialty of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, therefore, they didn’t have trainee medical officers but authorities were working to start offering MS in cornea.

“It has been decided that all those eye specialists, who have already passed FCPS examination in ophthalmology, would be enlisted in MS course,” he said.

However, he said that in the absence of donation of corneas by local population, they banked on the stuff sent by charity groups that wasn’t suffice to cater to the needs of the people.

Dr Zaman Shah said that Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA) was the main source of cornea donation but a number of patients kept waiting for longer period because of the less number of corneas they received.

“Now it is the time to develop our own source of cornea. We need a lot of cornea as it is a big issue in the province,” he said.

The ophthalmologist said that various assaults in the country, such as lime burns, acid burns, battery blast and pressure cooker blast were common that damaged corneas of the victims and turned them blind.

“All these patients need medical treatment along with stem cell transplantation, the expertise we don’t have at the moment,” he said.

Dr Zaman Shah said that LV Prasad Hospital in India had an established department for stem cell transplantation, therefore, they requested the government to sponsor them for few weeks training there. The government has recognised four hospitals for cornea transplants in the province so far.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2018