Hyderabad: The Hyderabad campus of L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) has claimed to have set a record in Corneal Transplantation, performing 2,043 surgeries in an year from April 2016.

"This is a record for the highest ever corneal transplant surgeries from a single centre, anywhere in the world," L V Prasad Eye Institute Founder and Chair
Dr Gullapalli N Rao told reporters here yesterday. "Our vision by 2020 is to do 10,000 cornea transplants a year and serve 1 lakh patients suffering from eye ailments and also to become the number one eye bank in the world," Rao said.

Since its inception in 1986-87, the institute's Hyderabad campus has done 23,901 corneal transplant surgeries. Rao said, "Organ donation is a major challenge in India and this achievement should help raise the confidence that organ donation and transplantation in India can potentially touch record volumes, given a dedicated team approach and strategy."

The Ramayamma International Eye Bank at the campus harvested 7,166 corneas during last financial year, and distributed 3,810 corneas to corneal surgeons across the country. Corneal disease is a major cause of blindness in
India, he said. Of the 10 million blind in India, 1.1 million are blind in both eyes due to corneal disease, injury or infection, he said.

An estimated 80 per cent of blindness globally could either be prevented or treated, he said. New research and cutting edge techniques at the institute would augment transplant surgeries in using synthetic corneas and reduce the conventional dependency on donor corneas, he said. LVPEI has also been active with stem cell based treatment of corneal diseases, besides research in biosynthetic cornea as well as liquid cornea, Rao said. The LVPEI was established in 1986-87 as a not-for-profit, non-government eye care institution.