Rohit Shishodia

Corneal transplantation has been worst affected due to COVID-19 at the biggest and the most reputed hospital of the national capital, All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS).

Corneal transplantation used to be done regularly at the country’s premier medical institute and gave a vision to needy patients before the pandemic hit India.

Addressing the media on the occasion of the 36th Eye Donation Fortnight Celebration by NEB, Dr. JS Tityal, Chief, RP Centre, Delhi-AIIMS said on September 7, 2021 that NEB witnessed a 79.9% decrease in corneal tissue collection and a 78.2% decrease in tissue utilization as compared from April 2019 and March 2020.

Dr. JS Tityal, Chief, RP Centre, Delhi-AIIMS, said that during the period from April 2020 to March 2021 the NEB collected 394 corneal tissues and 311 keratoplasties (surgeries) were performed amounting to the utilization rate of 78.9%.

“The national tissue collection and utilization during this period was 18,359 and 12,998 respectively, amounting to a utilization rate of 70.7%,” he added.

Referring to earlier data, Dr. Titiyal informed, “We used to perform almost 1,000 corneal transplants from 2015 onwards till 2019, and this year it was only 394. There is a huge decrease in the number of surgeries as compared to previous years (before COVID).”

“Tissue retrieval is performed only from presumed COVID-19 negative donors as per established eye banking guidelines. To ensure maximum safety we perform a post-mortem swab RT-PCR testing for all our potential donors,” Delhi-AIIMS data stated on September 7, 2021.

“Of these tissues retrieved by us between July 2020 and July 2021 we found that 5.5% of the presumed COVID-19 negative donors tested RT-PCR positive for SARS-CoV2. The tissues from these donors were not used for corneal transplantation and were subjected to further microbiological analysis,” it added.