Artificial corneas to be produced here next year

JAKARTA (JP): The Lions Eye Institute of Perth, Australia, the Jakarta Eye Center and the University of Indonesia's School of Medicine plan to conduct joint research here into designing highly sophisticated artificial corneas beginning next year.

Professor Ian Contable of the Perth institute said on Saturday during a seminar to mark the 15th anniversary of the Jakarta Eye Center that the memorandum of understanding for the research had been signed by the three parties a day earlier.

Contable gave no details on the plan but said if the research to design high-quality artificial corneas was a success it would be a milestone in the industry and help curb problems suffered by recipients of artificial corneas around the globe.

Many participants in the seminar, Recent Advances in Ophthalmic Surgery, at the President Hotel predicted the new artificial corneas could be cheaper for patients.

"The (artificial) corneas currently available are rigid. A few months after the transplant, they fall out because the tissue around them goes soft and melts," Contable said.

"So many eyes have been lost because of such operations."

He said the Lions Eye Institute already had designed "soft" artificial corneas, which have been undergoing preclinical laboratory tests for the past four years.

"This (new cornea) does not cause the tissue around the cornea to erode and melt," Contable said.

He said his institute currently was required to carry out at least 10 operations with the "soft corneas" and then wait a year for an independent committee of doctors to review the results of the operations.

"If they (results) aren't good enough, we would need to make improvements. If they work, we'll perform 50 more (similar operations)," Contable said.

In cornea transplants, the damaged corneas are first removed from a patient's eyes. Then the artificial corneas, taken from a corpse and shaped to fit into the hollows of the patient's eyes, are transplanted.

According to Contable, his institute's laboratories already had constructed a new artificial cornea which was officially tested in May last year.

Separately, Dr. Darmayanti Siswoyo, a specialist in reconstructive eye surgery here, said that eye reconstruction surgery in Indonesia had become more expensive since the economic crisis hit.

"For example, each pack of sutures used in a surgery, both for the inner and outer part of the eye, cost about Rp 100,000 before the crisis hit in June 1997," said Darmayanti, who has practiced ophthalmology here since 1987.

Now, the price of the sutures is some Rp 270,000, she added.

Darmayanti also said that many ophthalmologists here no longer used the imported titanium screws from the United States and Australia because of the depreciation of the rupiah.

"We now use steel wires, which are much cheaper," she said.

A three to six-hour operation on a fractured orbital eye bone, for example, would cost some Rp 5 million at a private hospital and about Rp 1 million in a state-run hospital.

The two-day seminar, which ended on Sunday, was attended by 236 ophthalmologists from across Indonesia and from three other countries. Participants at the seminar discussed several new operations for eye diseases and abnormal structures or functions of the eye.

Many participants detailed their latest research, including research dealing with retinal detachments, cataracts and artificial corneas.

Dr. Sjakon G. Tahija, who has practiced ophthalmology since 1988, revealed his success with Pneumatic-Retinopexy, an operation where a special gas is injected into the eye with a very fine needle.

In at least 23 operations he personally performed over the last four years, the operations had proven to grant "excellent vision" to patients.

"The Pneumatic-Retinopexy operation takes about 15 minutes and is inexpensive," Sjakon said.

"There's very little discomfort after the operation. And there's no bruising or change in eye shape. Patient can go back to work a day after the operation." (ylt)