Vasan Eye Care Performs Implants IOL on 1-Month-Old Baby

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Vasan Eye Care Hospital implants Intraocular Lens on a one month old infant for the first time in South India Doctors at Vasan Eye Care give vision to the Youngest cataract patient in South India. Doctors at Vasan Eye Care give vision to the Youngest cataract patient in South India

bangalore, India., March 7, 2013 - (PressReleasePoint) - For the first time in South India, Vasan Eye Care Hospital has implanted Intraocular Lens (IOL) on a 1 month old baby and brought vision to him. While many hospitals restrain from performing this type of surgery on children less than 2 years of age, surgeons at Vasan Eye Care Hospital have successfully completed the challenging surgical procedure.

A new born male infant from Chennai was suffering from severe eye sight problem that his eyes were constantly closed and could not respond to any visual stimuli. Hence, the baby was brought to Vasan Eye Care Hospital, Anna Nagar seeking a solution with much hope and desire.

After a series of medical examinations, Dr J Arun Kumar – Chief Medical Officer, identified that the child had total cataracts in both the eyes and he required cataract extraction with Intraocular Lens (IOL) implantation. The baby was thoroughly evaluated to rule out other coexistent abnormalities including glaucoma, small corneas, very small eye ball and presence of active infections like German Measles.

According to Dr Manjula Jayakumar, Paediatric Ophthalmologist, Vasan Eye Care Hospital, “In children born with cataract, their immature nervous system will not receive visual stimulation that needs to develop the visual pathways in the brain. This even leads to permanent vision loss.Therefore pediatric cataract surgery and visual stimulation needs to be addressed as early as possible to avoid complications such as lazy eye and squint”.

Later the IOL power was calculated based on the axial length of the eye ball and the child underwent cataract extraction with primary IOL implantation and anterior vitrectomy first in the right eye on January 21^st, 2013 and subsequently, in the left eye on February 12^th,2013.

Speaking about the success of South India’s first IOL implantation on a 1 month old infant, Dr J Arun Kumar, Cataract, Cornea and Refractive Surgeon, Vasan Eye Care Hospital said, “Most tertiary referral centres implant IOL only at 2 years of age even if the pediatric cataract surgery is performed earlier. However, we took it as a challenge and performed the surgery.

The baby is completely alright now and he brightly opens his eyes and responds to visual stimuli. For the first time, the kid recognizes his mother and smiles at her with joy.”

In the case of the 1 month old child, had it not been for the intraocular lens implantation, the baby would have had the burden of wearing thick glasses which has distortions and magnification that will hamper the visual development significantly.

About Vasan Eye Care

The Vasan Eye Care network is a premier institution of eye care hospitals in the country that has been making a difference to over 6 million patients every year, making it a household name in South India today. Vasan Eye Care, the group's biggest success story, set up its first hospital in the year 2002 and has now grown to over 150 eye care hospitals India. With more than 750 Ophthalmologists and over 7500 service staff, Vasan Eye Care is now the world's largest eye care network. Vasan will be launching 35+ hospitals in North, East, and West of India thereby increasing the network to over 175 hospitals. The group is planning to open up more hospitals in Delhi, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Bihar, Goa and in Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala & Karnataka in the South. The network has also opened up hospitals in Dubai and Colombo recently.

Vasan has been certified as the “World’s Largest Eye Care provider with the maximum number of stand-alone surgical centres” in 2011 by Frost & Sullivan. Today on an average 25,000 patients walk in every day, so far over 20 million patients have been treated at Vasan Eye Care hospitals across the country and over 5 million procedures have been completed, which means every minute at Vasan, 5 new people discover the joy of clear vision.