Eight Patients in India Go Blind After Cataract Surgery

More than 60 patients with vision complications in India, late last month, underwent Cataract surgery to have good eyesight, but the surgery proved fatal for some patients’ vision. The tragic incident occurred at the private Joseph Institute of Ophthalmology in Tiruchi, India.

Eight of the 29 patients, who have been admitted to Joseph Eye Hospital in Tiruchi with complaints of blurred vision, have lost their eyesight after being allegedly administered contaminated eye drops during a cataract operation at the institution’s satellite hospital at Perambalur last month.

Cataract is clouding of the human biological lens in the eye that causes a decrease in vision and may lead to eventual blindness. The normal lens that is made up of approximately 35% protein and 65% water allows the light to reach the retina. When it becomes opaque, it does not allow light to reach the retina.

In India, more than 12 million people are blind. 77% of blindness due to cataract occurs around the age of 40 and continues until about age 65.

The cataract operation was performed during a camp jointly conducted by the Blindness Prevention Society and the private hospital on July 28. At least 66 eye patients from different villages, who were identified at a special camp at Kaduvanur in Villupuram district on July 28, underwent surgery in the satellite hospital at Perambalur the next day.

A day after the operation, eight patients were discharged without any problems, while the others were discharged a few days later. But, days after the operation, more than 50 patients complained of poor vision in one of their eyes that had been operated upon. They returned with the complaints of severe pain, vomiting and blurred vision during review.

Twenty-nine of the patients, including 14 women, were referred to the base hospital in the city on Friday night. Of them, eight patients have become totally blind, while nine others admitted to the hospital are said to be ‘clinically better,’ and have gained near normal vision.

Meanwhile, a team of ophthalmologists from the Tiruchirappalli Government Hospital on Saturday visited the hospital in Perambalur to inspect the operation theater where the cataract operation was conducted on July 28, and collect samples of the eye drops administered to the patients.

Though it’s suspected that the infection was caused by contamination in the saline solution, but both hospital and the probe team headed by dean of the Government Perambalur Medical College Dr R Balasubramanian said the exact cause could be ascertained only after the results of the microbiological tests on the swabs taken from the satellite hospital were known.

Joseph Eye Hospital is one of the major voluntary organizations that carry out free cataract surgeries in the State. The institute performs about 38,000 surgeries on an average every year.

Cataract surgery is a procedure performed to remove a cloudy lens from the eye that has developed an opacification, which is referred to as a cataract. Metabolic changes of the crystalline lens fibers over the time lead to the development of the cataract and loss of transparency.

Currently, there are two main types of cataract surgery extraction that are performed by the eye surgeons: intracapsular and extracapsular. Intracapsular surgery is the removal of both the lens and the thin capsule that surround them, while extracapsular cataract surgery is the removal of the lens where the capsule is left in place.