Lasik and Indians

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Lasik and Indians...

 

The Times of India Online

 

Printed from timesofindia.indiatimes.com > Health/Science

 

 

Laser surgery not for Indian eyes

 

KALPANA JAIN

 

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, AUGUST 01, 2002 9:08:29 PM ]

 

NEW DELHI: Want to get rid of those unwanted glasses with laser

surgery? You better make sure you are up to it.

Scientists at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) — who

are getting patients with severe complications

following this surgery — say the thinness of Indian corneas means those

who go in for laser surgery, also known as

lasik, without proper screening run the risk of permanent damage to

their eyes.

 

Lasik surgery, used for correcting common vision defects, involves

slicing off a part of the clear covering over the front

of the eye called the cornea. For complete correction, the size of the

cornea to be cut has to be accurate while

leaving enough of it for a normal functioning eye.

 

But the Indian eye is different from the ‘Western’ eye, found

researchers at AIIMS, who checked 1,069 eyes for

corneal thickness after noticing the large number of complications.

"Slicing a big piece of the cornea may lead to the

cornea becoming very weak and bring about complications after some

time," says professor at the Rajendra Prasad

Institute for Ophthalmic Sciences, Dr R B Vajpayee, who led the

research.

 

Young patients are now landing up with complications of bulging of a

weak cornea, which leads to high myopia. Some

of these patients may eventually lose their vision too, for which the

only option is corneal grafting, adds Vajpayee.

These effects, he says, may not be apparent soon after surgery but may

take as long as five years to appear.

Vajpayee says he saw three patients with these complications last year.

"This by itself is a large number. But the

actual number may be much more," he adds.

 

In fact, different units at AIIMS are reporting the same problem. For

instance, Dr Atul Kumar, an expert on retinas, has

seen two patients with retinal detachments as well following the

surgery. "This is the beginning. We may see a large

number of patients after ten years or so," said another researcher at

AIIMS, Dr J S Titiyal. People need to know that

not everyone can be eligible for this surgery, he adds.

 

"Our refusal rate at AIIMS is 20 to 30 per cent," says Vajpayee. But

it’s possible that after being refused at AIIMS

these patients go to a private establishment to get the surgery done.

 

"It is certainly not as safe as it is made out to be for Indian

patients," says Vajpayee.

 

The average size of the Indian cornea is about 519 microns compared to

557 microns in the West. Slicing off a layer

of 30 microns would only induce a correction of minus one or so, says

Vajpayee.

 

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