Hyderabad September 2024: The Shantilal Shanghvi Cornea Institute – at the LVPEI has achieved the distinction of performing the highest number of corneal transplants ever by any Institution in the world. LVPEI has performed over 50,000 corneal transplants since its inception in 1987.
This monumental achievement was made possible by the diligent squadof our doctors and the extended team, and the trust reposed in us by scores of supporters all over the world who were generous with their treasure, time and talent. All this would not have been possible but for the generosity of cornea donor families in their hour of grief.
The Shantilal Shanghvi Cornea Institute ((SSCI) was the first of the Institutes of Excellence conceived at LVPEI. Envisaged as a global resource centre, it works to impact all the key causes and forms of corneal impairment and blindness in the world. It is a major resource for capacity building and development of cornea care facilities across the world. It operates one of the largest cornea services in the world and makes a sizeable contribution to the quality of care and access and is a leader in high quality training programmes and research.
LVPEI’s eye bank network is the bed rock of this success. Spread across southern and eastern India, the four eye banks (Ramayamma International Eye Bank – Hyderabad, Mohsin Eye Bank – Visakhapatnam, Drushti Daan Eye Bank – Bhubaneswar, TKEB – Vijayawada) currently receive a donation of over 12,000 corneas every year. Thanks to their success, there is no waiting list for corneal transplants in these three states – Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
Since its inception in 1989, the Ramayamma International Eye Bank(the biggest in Asia- Pacific region) has produced over 510,000 vials of corneal preservation medium (the MK medium) and harvested 129,500+ corneas.
Our founding Chairman Dr Gullapalli N Rao shares, “This is really a significant development, corneal blindness is a kind of blindness where the front part of the eye becomes opaque and the person becomes visually impaired. The only way of treating it is corneal transplant. India has the largest magnitude of this kind of blindness in the world and we are not in a position to meet the demand of corneal transplant in the country. We need at least one lakh corneal transplants in our country, but we are able to do only 30,000 in the whole country in a year. When we started our Institute in 1987, we were doing only 3000 corneal transplants in the country, with a very high rate of transplant failures, lot of it was due to poor quality of donor corneas that was available for transplantation, there were only few well trained corneal transplant surgeons and poor understanding of the follow up care needed for transplantation. There were many sceptics discouraging us, when we started on this journey. I am pleased that we have proved all the naysayers wrong. This has been a journey of many twists and turns, with learnings at every turn! I am proud of my team who worked tirelessly over the years and congratulate them on reaching this milestone. In the last 35 years we could collect 1.2 lakh corneas, the highest in the entire Asia Pacific Region. We could perform 50000 corneal transplants in the 37 years of the Institute’s existence. No other institute has done as many transplants in the world as of now. All that we need for the country is Rs 50 crs investment, 50 eye banks, 500 active corneal transplant surgeons doing 200 transplants every year, 500 hospitals with corneal retrieval program. It is a small problem which can be addressed easily.”
Dr Prashant Garg, Executive Chairman – LVPEI on this momentous occasion shared, “This milestone was reached, thanks to Dr G N Rao’s determination and the commitment of many individuals and organisations both in India and oversees who supported us through their time, talent, and treasure. I thank each one of them for their support and guidance. I am proud of this wonderful team. The corneal problems are different in developing and developed countries. In developing countries the problem is largely due to simple corneal injury that happens during farming, manual labour. In rural areas people instead of seeking an eye specialist’s help resort to self-remedies leading to blindness. One of the most important cause is corneal infection, the other one is corneal injuries. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, consanguineous marriagesare also a cause. Off late the cause is the poor performing of cataract surgeries. Vision loss from injury is preventable.”
Dr Pravin Vaddavalli, Director of the Shantilal Shanghvi Cornea Institute, reiterating the institute’s mission, said, “The focus of the Shantilal Shanghvi Cornea Institute will be to continue making appropriate treatment available for eye problems resulting from corneal diseases.”
About L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI)
Established in 1987, with the vision,” to create excellent and equitable eye care systems that reach all those in need,” the L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), a comprehensive eye health facility, is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Prevention of Blindness.
In pursuance of this vision, LVPEI clinicians and scientists work at the cutting edge of eye research. Through its five-tier ‘‘Eye Health Pyramid’ model, it has till date offered over 36.89 million services (3 crores 68 lakh services), with more than 50% entirely free of cost, irrespective of the complexity of care needed. For further information, visit the Institute’s website, www.lvpei.org.