Hyderabad: LVPEI bags record of highest number of corneal transplants in the world

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.

Hyderabad: 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.

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.

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LVPEI’s eye bank network spread across southern and eastern India, has four eye banks (Ramayamma International Eye Bank – Hyderabad, Mohsin Eye Bank – Visakhapatnam, Drushti Daan Eye Bank – Bhubaneswar, TKEB – Vijayawada) and currently receive a donation of over 12,000 corneas every year. Since its inception in 1989, the Ramayamma International Eye Bank has produced over 510,000 vials of corneal preservation medium and harvested 129,500 corneas.

Founding Chairman Dr Gullapalli N Rao said, “we need at least one lakh corneal transplants in our country, but we are able to do only 30,000 in a year.”

He pointed out that when they started the Institute in 1987, only 3000 corneal transplants were done in the country, with a very high rate of transplant failures. “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,” he added.