The eyes of popular Kannada actor Puneeth Rajkumar, who died three days ago after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest,  were donated to four young people. Three males and one female recipient underwent transplant surgery at Narayana Nethralaya in the last two days. The hospital withheld information about the patients in order to safeguard their privacy.

Two patients were treated with each of the late actor’s eyes. The cornea’s superior and deeper layers were separated. Two patients with superficial corneal disease received the superior layer, whereas those with endothelial or deep corneal layer disease received only the deeper layer. According to the hospital, this is a very unusual occurrence.

“All four patients are between 20 and 30 years of age. They were on the waiting list for over 6 months now. Due to Covid-19, eye donations had stopped completely. Earlier, we used to do at least 200 transplant surgeries per month in our hospital. Things are getting better for the past 2-3 months. But the waiting list is long. So we made the best use of available eyes and instead of two, we were able to do a successful transplant in four patients,” Dr Bhujang Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Nethralaya, told News18.

Further explaining the procedures, he said, “the procedures that were performed on the patients were two different techniques of lamellar keratoplasty. Deep Anterior Lamellar Keratoplasty (DALK) – the outer or superficial part of cornea was transplanted for two young patients with corneal dystrophy and keratoconus. Both these conditions affect predominantly the superficial layer of the cornea, while the deeper part of the eye is normal. Hence, only the superior part was replaced and the endothelium of the patient was retained. This greatly reduces the chance of graft rejection.”

Additionally, the limbal rim (the white area of the eye near the circumference of the cornea) that was not utilised for transplants was transferred to a lab to be converted into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ for use in patients with Limbal Stem Cell shortage, chemical damage, acid burns, and other critical conditions. 

Therefore, there is a good chance that a some more patients may see the light of day through Puneeth Rajkumar’s donated eyes.