A TEAM of experts from the US-based Subraj Foundation will be visiting Guyana this week to perform a series of corneal transplant surgeries at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).The team, which is scheduled to arrive early tomorrow, will be at the GPHC all day to see patients and perform corneal transplants, and again on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a release from GPHC’s Department of Ophthalmology.

The team will perform transplants based on the amount of donor corneas they can procure, and they are aiming to do around 10 transplants.

The team, headed by Dr. Rahul Jindal, has been coming to Guyana for some time, and has a record of already performing twenty-six kidney transplants and six corneal transplants in Guyana. The prior six corneal transplants were successfully done at the Balwant Singh Hospital in August 2014.

The team will comprise three physicians, namely Dr. Jindal along with two corneal transplant surgeons, Dr. Stephen Waller and Dr. Joseph Pasternak. They will be accompanied by members of the Subraj Foundation Transplantation Team, namely Messrs George Subraj, Jay Narain and Lakhram Persaud.
According to Dr. Shailendra Sugrim, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, over the past month, the Department of Ophthalmology has been generating a list of patients to be seen by the team on the morning of June 30. From this pool of patients, the team will decide the suitability for transplant surgery.
The team will be bringing the donor corneas with them, along with special microsurgical ophthalmic instruments to perform these surgeries. The visiting corneal specialists will work along with local ophthalmologists to perform the surgeries.
EYE BANK IN GUYANA
The team is also interested in lobbying towards the establishment of an Eye Bank in Guyana from where donor corneas can be stored and kept for transplantation. These donor corneas are taken from cadavers. They have to be stored in a special liquid medium and can survive for a limited period of time.

The cornea – the clear “glass-window” of the eye – refracts light and allows the entrance of light into the eye and this enables us to see. Any disorder that makes the cornea cloudy or opacified can cause severe visual impairment. Many patients who become blinded by corneal opacities or disorders can regain their sight via corneal transplants.

The GPHC Department of Ophthalmology is also encouraging any patient who has been previously recommended for corneal transplants by ophthalmologists to come to the GPHC Eye Clinic with the letter of recommendation from their ophthalmologist along with all investigations that have been previously done. Those patients who have already had corneal transplants and would like to have a review by the team can also come to the clinic tomorrow at 8:00am. They are advised to bring the clinical records of their previous surgery, the release added.