omlog: a blog by Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai, India!

Child Of Hope Gains Vision

Jennifer at NDTV.com writes:

Six-month-old baby Sukumar is all set to undergo his third eye surgery this Friday.

Born blind, he was found by the NDTV team at a temporary camp in Nagapattinam soon after the tsunami hit on December 26 last year.

With the money saved for his surgery lost to the waves, his parents have been in and out of the Sankara Nethralaya for surgeries that have given the child sight in his left eye.

The treatment has been free of cost and the grateful parents are excited about the prospect of their baby getting some vision.

"They've done one eye, now they say they have to do the other eye on Friday," said Selvaraj, Sukumar's father.

Baby Sukumar or the child of hope, as he is known, is now 10 months old and getting to be a bundle of energy.

He's just finished another check up and this is a prelude to what could probably be his last surgery at the end of the week.

Eye Camp For Journalists

An eye camp was organized for the journalists of Chennai at Navasuja Sankara Nethralaya on Sunday April 17, 2005. The program was organized on the behest of the National Union of Journalists, Tamil Nadu division. Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss, Honourable Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare inaugurated the camp.

Dr. Anbumani was received by Dr. K. Ravishankar, CEO, Medical Research Foundation, Dr. T. S. Surendran, Vice Chairman, Medical Research Foundation and Mr. V. Vaidyanathan, Hony. Secretary and Treasurer, Medical Research Foundation at Navasuja. The inauguration began with a prayer song followed by welcome address by Mr. Balasubramaniam, General Secretary, National Union of Journalists.

In his talk, Dr. R. Anbumani, spoke about the important role being played by private institutions like Sankara Nethralaya in helping the government in achieving the goal of reducing preventable blindness in the country. He mentioned that of all the healthcare programs launched in the country, the most successful was the eye care program and this was mainly due to the effort of organizations like Sankara Nethralaya joining hands with the government in providing eye care and doing cataract surgeries.

About 80 journalists underwent the eye examination. Those requiring further investigation and treatment were referred to the respective departments.

Molecular Medicine To The Rescue

Dr. Colins Barnstable, D. Phil, Yale University School of Medicine, USA and Joyce Tombran Tink, Ph.D., University of Missouri, Kansas, visited Sankara Nethralaya on April 4, 2005. They were taken to all the research labs and they spent little longer time in the departments where they had discussions on areas of mutual interests. They provided us with a soft copy of all their recent publications and have volunteered to help us with the data base information on the origin of the 88KD protein.

Later in the evening Dr. Colin Barnstable gave a lecture on "Growth factors and Neuroprotection in the retina" and Dr. Joyce Tombran Tink gave a lecture on "Control of cell death and cell survival in retinal diseases by PEDF," which was very informative as it elaborated on the therapeutic prospects of PEDF as an antiangiogenic and neuroprotective agent. A therapeutic intervention based on molecular medicine seems to be gaining momentum.

Mebiol Gel Applications

Dr. Yoshioka of Waseda University visited Sankara Nethralaya on April 5, 2005. He met with our Chairman Dr. S. S. Badrinath, Dr. Vasanthi Badrinath, Dr. Tarun Sharma, CEO. Dr. K. Ravishakar, Dr. Krishna Kumar and Dr. H N Madhavan. He discussed further research programs on stem cell cultivation in Mebiol Gel and its clinical applications. Dr. Samual Abraham and Dr. Premanandan, both of Yamanashi University, Japan, also attended the meeting.

Patient Satisfaction Is High Priority

On April 2, 2005, Sankara Nethralaya's Patient Relation Officer Mr. Shivaraman, Ms. Rajamani, Ms. Sarvodhaya, Ms. Lysa Sagar and Mr. Suresh Kumar participated in a seminar on "How To Enhance Patient Satisfaction," conducted by the Institute of Health Management Research (IHMR), Bangalore at the Madras Cricket Club.

Sankara Nethralaya's Telemedicine At Work

Here is a classic example of teleconferencing at work at Sankara Nethralaya. A 54-year female patient was reported to have signs and symptoms of corneal disease for the past four months. When she consulted Dr. Madhav Rao at Sankara Nethralaya's Bangalore center, at about 2.30 p.m. on April 5, 2005, he arranged for a teleconference with the cornea consultant Dr. Rama Raja Gopal at Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai. She suggested that a corneal scraping be taken immediately for microbiological investigations for a more accurate diagnosis.
 
On the advise of Dr. S.S. Badrinath, it was decided to send one of our staff members from our clinical microbiology department to the Bangalore center to collect the corneal scrapings specimen from the patient. Mrs. B.Mahalakshmi, Senior Research Fellow from Sankara Nethralaya's microbiology department volunteered to go to Bangalore to collect the specimen. She left Chennai with the collection kit and the culture media required for inoculation and reached Bangalore the next day at 5.30 a.m.

The patient was requested to come in for an examination at 7.00 a.m on April 6, 2005 and Dr. Madhav Rao collected the corneal scraping for direct smear and inoculated it onto all the culture media. Mrs. B. Mahalakshmi then flew back to Chennai by 11.30 a.m.
 
On examination of the KOH (10%potassium hydroxide) Calcoflour white stained preparation Acanthamoeba cysts were seen and thus the diagnosis was made within 10 minutes after reaching Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai. Dr. Madhav Rao was telephonically informed of the etiology of the corneal ulcer and the appropriate treatment was advised. The following drugs were provided: 0.02 % PHMB in Moisol (10 vials) was prepared at the hospital (as this is not commercially available) and was sent along with Golden eye drops (2 vials) and Neosporin ointment by courier around 3.30 p.m.
 
Thus the teleconference on the clinical ocular examination of the patient and the efforts put in by the well-coordinated teamwork of Sankara Nethralaya doctors and the microbiology team, resulted in accurate etiological diagnosis to enable initiation of appropriate therapy within 14 hours of reporting to the doctor at Bangalore Sankara Nethralaya center.

Research & Ethics

We would like to let you know that the Research and Ethics subcommittee meeting of the Vision Research Foundation was held on April 6, 2005.

Dr. Rajiv Raman presented on the ICDs in regional languages and patient diary related to the project titled “Reduction in the occurrence of center-threatening diabetic macular edema”, which was approved by the Research and Ethics subcommittee on December 4, 2004.

The following new proposals were presented and discussed:

Dr. Arunkumar Narayanasamy presented the project titled "An open, non-comparative, multicentre study to assess efficacy and safety of fixed dose combination of Timolol 0.5% and Dorzolamide 2% ophthalmic solution in patients with open angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension."

Dr. Angayarkanni presented the project on "Tear Proteomics in dry eye syndrome (DES) – A preliminary study."

Dr. Narayani C. Moorthy presented the project titled "Diabetic Retinopathy : Functional Genomics – Gene expression profiles."

Dr. S. Ambika presented her project on "Asian collaborative longitudinal optic neuritis epidemiology."

Dr. S. Meenakshi presented the project titled "Central corneal thickness (CCT) in a pediatric population and its relationship to intraocular pressure."

Ms. Dharani presented her project titled "Gene mapping for Myopia and identification of environmental risk factors for myopia progression in subjects with gentle susceptibility."

Notable Donations

Mr. Ritish Shah of Nairobi, Kenya called on our Chairman to express the gratitude of his family on the successful surgery and treatment given by Dr. Lingam Gopal to his mother Smt. Ratanben.  He made a donation of Rs.1lakh to Medical Research Foundation towards performing a free major surgery on an indigent patient perpetually on the birthday of his daughter Ms. Arshi every November 30.

Mr. P. N. Ramalingam, Advocate on Record - Supreme Court met with our Chairman and made a donation of Rs. 1 lakh to Medical Research Foundation.

Mr. Abraham Retires

Mr. Abraham joined Sankara Nethralaya on September 1, 1979 as an Attender. He served Sankara Nethralaya for 25 years and 6 months and retired on February 28, 2005 as an ECG Technician. He was selected as an "Outstanding Employee of the year" in August 2003.

As a token of our appreciation for his long and loyal service, our Chairman Dr. S. S. Badrinath presented him with a gold plated memento on April 8, 2005. We wish him all the best on his retirement.

And The Winner Is ...

Dr. T. S. Surendran, Medical Director of Sankara Nethralaya and a consultant who treats children in the department of pediatric and squint has just been notified that he is the recipient of the Dr. N.S. Reddy Endowment Award.

Dr. V. Chandrashekar Reddy, professor at Hyderabad's Sarojinidevi Eye Institute, writes that the award has been conferred on Dr. T.S. Surendran for his "excellent work in the field of squint and pediatric ophthalmology."

Congratulations Dr. Surendran!