The Hindu : Front Page : Chennai hospital designs world's smallest needle

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 22, 2005

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Chennai hospital designs world's smallest needle

M. Dinesh Varma

"Despite the reduced incision loop, the operating time for cataract is under five minutes."

CHENNAI: Ever since the phaco procedures, featuring surgical incisions of barely 3 mm to remove the cataract mass, arrived in the 70s, the area of incisions employed to correct the leading cause of blindness in the country has been shrinking.

Now a leading private ophthalmic hospital in Chennai has designed a 0.7 mm phaco needle tip that works in tandem with a matching irrigating chopper to provide ophthalmologists the smallest tools ever used for cataract surgery.

Billed as the world's smallest needle in a recent issue of EyeWorld, a publication of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the micro incision surgery (Microphakonit) has been pioneered by Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital.

Microphakonit is basically an improvement on the 1 mm Phakonit (needle incision technology) developed by the hospital in 1998.

The team led by its director Amar Agarwal used gas-forced infusion through an air pump to ensure that adequate quantity of fluid is injected through the reduced diameter of the needle and the critical aspiration flow rate is maintained. The disintegrated cataract nucleus is vacuumed out through the aspiration needle.

"Despite the reduced incision loop, the operating time for cataract is under five minutes for a skilled hand," said Dr. Amar Agarwal.

At present, an incision of 1.5 mm is made for the foldable lens implant to pass through and anchor inside the eye. The onus is now on industry to come up with even smaller versions of foldable lenses.

If it took 20 years after phaco for the 3 mm foldable lens to be developed, it hardly took three years for 1.5 mm rollable lens to hit the market since Phakonit procedures were pioneered in 1998.

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