A little over two months ago, on Diwali day, four-year-old Anandhi decided to be adventurous and set off a small firework by herself. It burst into her face, damaging her cornea and leaving her blind in the right eye.

Early this month, Anandhi’s normal vision was restored when, in the first procedure of its kind, Dr Amar Agarwal of Agarwal Eye Hospital in Chennai fixed an intra-ocular lens (IOL) in her damaged eye using tissue glue.

According to Dr Agarwal, it was the first time in the world that tissue or fibrin glue (composed of fibrinogen and thrombin extracted from human blood) was used for an IOL implant. This could end the need for painful suturing in different kinds of eye surgeries, including refractive surgeries, he said.

While fibrin glue has been used for cataract operations and surgeries in other fields of medicine, including urology and cardiology, this is the first time it was used for an IOL implant, said the surgeon.

Dr Agarwal added that using sutures to fix an IOL does not work as well since the lens shakes whenever a patient jumps or moves around too quickly. The fibrin glue, on the other hand, keeps the lens firmly in place and is very suitable particularly for active children. It was also found that patients developed problems in the case of permanent sutures several years later, he said. In Anandhi’s case too, an earlier surgery using sutures did not work as the cornea had been severely damaged.

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