Rare surgery performed on patient who injured cornea playing Badminton

Amar Agarwal of Dr. Agarwals Eye Hospital in Chennai performs pinhole pupilloplasty to restore vision after eye injury.

Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital performed a rare procedure on a person who had injured his eye while playing badminton. The 67-year-old patient, hailing from Tambaram, suffered from a cut cornea.

“The entire front portion of the cornea was cut,” said Amar Agarwal, chairman of the hospital. Normally, the procedure adopted is corneal transplantation. But there were complications: multiple sutures, rejection of donor cornea, and problems related to corneal transplant later in the patient’s life, he added.

The doctor decided to perform a pinhole pupilloplasty to treat the corneal opacity and scars. The procedure is reserved for people with conical cornea or keratoconus. The technique is designed to reduce the size of the pupil to that of a pinhole, limiting the amount of light entering the eye. This ensures that images focus sharply on the retina, thereby enhancing the patient’s visual acuity, Dr. Agarwal said. The advantage is not having to worry about donor cornea rejection and faster recovery of sight.

“Mr. Mani from Tambaram came to us with a massive injury. We performed pinhole pupilloplasty, restoring his sight faster,” he said. Mr. Mani said the shuttle cock hit his spectacles and shattered it. “When I opened my eyes, everything was black. I called my son immediately and told him. I was rushed to Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital in Tambaram. They referred me here,” he said.