Transplants carried out at Narayana Nethralaya with the help of advanced technologies

Bengaluru: Actor Puneeth Rajkumar’s eyes have been transplanted to a woman and three men and this is probably for the first time in the State, that the eyes of a deceased person has given sight to four persons. Chairman and Managing Director of Narayana Nethralaya Dr. Bhujang Shetty, said that the transplant was carried out with the help of advanced technologies.

Addressing media persons on Monday, Dr. Bhujang Shetty said “Even in their grief, Puneeth’s family extended their support to donate his eyes. We collected the eyes on Friday, the day he died, and they were transplanted the very next day. Generally, we transplant donated eyes to two persons but in Puneeth’s case, we were able to give sight to four youths.”

“The superior layer was transplanted to two patients and only the deeper layer was transplanted to patients with deep corneal layer disease. Hence, we created four different transplants from two corneas to restore vision for four different patients. This had not been done in Karnataka so far, to the best of our knowledge,” Dr. Bhujang Shetty added. The four recipients are doing well after surgery.

Following the footsteps of his father Dr. Rajkumar, the family of Puneeth Rajkumar donated his eyes on Oct. 29. Dr. Bhujang Shetty personally monitored the eye retrieval process.

The surgeries were performed by a team of doctors led by Rohit Shetty, head of the department of Cornea and Refractive Surgery. The team included Yathish Shivanna, Medical Director of Dr. Rajkumar Eye Bank, and consultants Sharon D’Souza, Harsha Nagaraj and Prarthana Bhandary.