Ophthalmological award

Ophthalmologist Dr Cyres K. Mehta and his team were adjudged first for the National Premier League (NPL) award at EyeAdvance 2012, the meet of the International Academy for Advances in Ophthalmology, held every two years. This year the conference was held, in conjunction with the Bombay Ophthalmologists Association, at the Hyatt Regency in Bombay from August 3 to 5, 2012 and attended by over 2,000 delegates from many countries, reveals an e-mail received by Parsiana from Mehta.

Dr Cyres Mehta receiving award from Dr Sonal Lakdawala

EyeAdvance was started in the 1990s by Mehta’s father Prof Keiki Mehta and Prof Kirit Modi, both eminent ophthalmic surgeons. Over the years this conference has earned international recognition and has the largest number of foreign doctors attending, Cyres mentions. The NPL is an organization where the best surgeons in the country and abroad are invited to show videos of their most difficult cases and how these were handled surgically. The videos are then judged by a panel of eminent Indian and foreign ophthalmologists, he explains. The team adjudged the best gets the Best NPL Award. This format has become very popular and has also been used by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the leading meet for eye surgeons in the USA, Cyrus states.

This year Cyres was invited to perform a cataract surgery "live” in front of an audience of eye surgeons from 15 countries ranging from Bulgaria, Germany, UK, USA and Singapore. His team comprised surgeons from Madras, Delhi and even as far afield as Israel. Today, cataract surgery, using the most modern equipment and techniques, takes as little as five minutes to perform. "The old days where the patient had an injection near the eye are gone as we just put a few eye-drops and perform the surgery painlessly,” Cyres explains. Also, due to the latest scientific advances, patients can have "customized” lenses implanted so that they are completely spectacle free post-surgery. Even "hard” cataracts, which were a challenge in earlier times, no longer pose difficulty with new technology and surgical techniques.

In early September this year Cyres was invited by the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) to conduct instruction courses on complicated cataract surgery and non-penetrating glaucoma surgery which he had pioneered in India in 2001, his e-mail reveals. He presented two papers, two posters and two videos, "arguably nearly the highest participation of any Indian eye surgeon.” Cyres is also editor of the Indian edition of Eurotimes, the magazine of ESCRS as well as of the journal of the Indian Implant Society. He has often been invited to operate live across the country in cities like Poona, Madras, Delhi, Dehradun, Navsari and Varanasi, he informed Parsiana.