Eleven corneal transplants were done this week at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation by a team of experts from the US-based Subraj Foundation.
A release from the GPHC today said that on arrival early in the morning of June 30th, the team spent all day at the hospital examining 35 patients in the clinic. On July 1st and 2nd, the surgeons performed 11 transplants, one cataract surgery, and one removal of corneal foreign body, the release said. Dr. Shailendra Sugrim, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology generated the list of patients to be seen by the team on the morning of June 30th. From this pool of patients, the team decided the suitability for transplant surgery.
Some of the patients required a second opinion from the US-based experts.The team will work closely with Dr. Sugrim in the follow up of the patients operated on, the release said.
The team brought the corneas with them, along with special micro-surgical Ophthalmic instruments to perform the surgeries. The donor corneas came from three US eye banks: Eastern Virginia, Texas Lions and NE Pennsylvania.
The team, headed by Dr. Rahul M. Jindal, has been coming to Guyana since 2008, and already has a record of performing twenty-six kidney transplants and six corneal transplants in Guyana. The previous six corneal transplants were successfully done by the same team in Guyana in August, 2014 and the corneas were donated by the N.E. Pennsylvania Eye Bank, the release added.
Jindal, team leader, thanked Michael Khan, CEO of GPHC, nurses and Dr.Sugrim for the superb arrangements in the operating rooms and clinics. Drs. Waller and Pasternack thanked George Subraj, President of Subraj Foundation, based in Queens, New York, for facilitating the humanitarian mission.
The US-based team is working with Dr. Sugrim to put together a list of patients who may require corneal transplants on the next visit, likely in September of this year. Patients are urged to contact Dr. Sugrim at the GPHC where all the procedures will be performed completely free of cost.
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