Dear Editor,
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a major distortion across the integral functioning of every other field related to health care. Nevertheless, it has also impacted residential training in ophthalmology since the number of outpatient department visits, inpatient admissions, number of camps, and surgeries have drastically gone down.[1] Being a well-known fact that precision of ophthalmic microsurgical practice improves with numbers performed, various alternative methods are devised by teaching hospitals to overcome the concern of decreasing surgical numbers. Hence, we decided to continue our phaco-emulsification training with animal models by using soap pellet as cataractous lens because of economical ease and availability.
Goat eyes were preferred for practice,[2] which was wrapped with gauze piece and was loaded on the morterial head. A superior tunnel of 8 mm was made at 12 0’clock and anterior chamber entry was made with keratome. At 9 0’ clock a clear corneal entry was made, followed by staining the anterior capsule with tryphan blue with subsequent injection of visco-elastic. At 6 0’ clock position a sideport was made, and depending upon the comfort of trainee a capsulorhexis of 5.5 mm either through the sideport or clear corneal entry. Phacoemulsification of central nucleus was done forming crater thus creating the required space. Soap pellets of 7.5 mm diameter was made using trephine, introduced through 12 0’clock tunnel and sutured thus making it ready for use.
For practice we made a side port at 11 0’clock position and the nucleus was initially trenched followed by cracking and emulsified subsequently. Trainees confident in divide and conquer can go ahead with stop and chop, direct chop techniques.
We believe this technique addresses the decreasing availability of human lens delivered via SICS for use due to low surgical numbers,[3] which is practiced widely across many centers for similar purposes.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
Video Available on: www.ijo.in
References
- 1.Mishra D, Nair AG, Gandhi RA, Gogate PJ, Mathur S, Bhushan P, et al. The impact of COVID-19 related lockdown on ophthalmology training programs in India –Outcomes of a survey. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2020;68:999–1004. doi: 10.4103/ijo.IJO_1067_20. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Sengupta S, Dhanapal P, Nath M, Haripriya A, Venkatesh R. Goat's eye integrated with a human cataractous lens:A training model for phacoemulsification. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2015;63:275–7. doi: 10.4103/0301-4738.156937. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Ribeiro AP, Silva ML, Rosa JP, Souza SF, Teixeira IA, Laus JL. Ultrasonographic and echobiometric findings in the eyes of Saanen goats of different ages. Vet Ophthalmol. 2009;12:313–7. doi: 10.1111/j.1463-5224.2009.00719.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.