It’s been three days since the death of the Kannada star Puneet Rajkumar, after sudden cardiac arrest. Their eyes were donated and now four young people have got a second life because of them. The recipients, three men and one woman, underwent transplant surgery in the last two days at Narayana Nethralaya. In order to comply with regulations and protect patients’ privacy, further information about them was not disclosed by the hospital.
Each eye of the late actor was used to treat two patients. The upper and deeper layers of the cornea were separated. The superior layer was implanted in two patients who had superficial corneal disease, and only the deep layer was implanted in patients with either endothelial or deep corneal layer disease. According to the hospital, this is quite a rare occurrence.
4 New lease of life for youth
“All the four patients are in the age group of 20 to 30 years. He was on the waiting list for more than 6 months. Eye donation was completely stopped due to Kovid-19. Earlier we used to do at least 200 transplant surgeries every month in our hospital. Things are getting better since last 2-3 months. But the waiting list is long. So we made the best use of available eyes and instead of two, we were able to perform successful transplants in 4 patients,” Dr Bhujang Shetty, President, Narayana Nethralaya told News18.
How is surgery done?
He further explained the process: The procedures that were performed on the patients were two different techniques of lamellar keratoplasty. Deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) – the outer or superficial portion of the cornea was transplanted for two young patients with corneal dystrophy and keratoconus. Both of these conditions mainly affect the superficial layer of the cornea, while the deeper part of the eye is common. Therefore, only the upper part was replaced and the patient’s endothelium was left intact. This greatly reduces the chances of graft rejection.
Descemet’s striping endothelial keratoplasty (DSEK) – transplantation of the inner or deep layer of the cornea for two patients with corneal endothelial decompensation affecting the inner layer of the cornea. In this procedure, only the endothelium is replaced and is usually done with a small incision and a few stitches. This avoids full-thickness corneal transplantation, is more comfortable for the patient and allows for faster recovery.
Not only four, there are more
These were surgical details. In addition, the limbal rim (the white part of the eye near the periphery of the cornea) that was not used for transplantation was used in the laboratory to produce ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ for potential use in patients with limbal stem cell deficiency. Has been sent. Chemical injuries, acid burns and other serious disorders.
So it is highly likely that a little more than four of these patients will get to see the light of day thanks to Puneet Rajkumar. The surgical team consisted of Dr. Yatish Shivana, Dr. Sharon D’Souza, Dr. Harsh Nagaraj, Dr. Rohit Shetty, Dr. Garrick Kundu and Mr. Veeresh.
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