Nandri, Madurai

It’s been a busy two and a half weeks at Aravind. So much so, that we hardly updated the blog at all! But fear not, here come all the updates!

Glaucoma Gang has been researching away in LAICO, while also interviewing some of the most knowledgeable glaucoma experts in the world including Dr. Krishnadas, the Chief Medical Officer and Dr. George, the Chief of Glaucoma Department at Aravind. Disha specifically looked into ways to make the surgical intervention of glaucoma less invasive, deskilled, and inexpensive by conducting a deep dive into the physiological underpinnings of glaucoma. Shayan conducted many patient interviews (with the help of Niranjanaa) in order to determine the root causes of non-compliance to topical medications in Aravind patients.

Cataract Cornea Crew has spent a lot of time talking to trainees in the wetlab, and interviewing experts for corneal transplants, like Dr. Ashish, Dr. Aswin and Dr. Das from Aravind. The wetlab was exciting in particular, since we got to look through an ophthalmoscope, play with human cataracts, and on the last day got to practice SICS on a human donor eye! Turns out SICS is not as easy as it seems, we basically had to butcher the eye open to take the IOL out of the donor eye. Surgeons are awesome!! We also tried to do intrastromal injections, where you have to target the drug midway through the cornea. Again, good thing we decided to become engineers instead of doctors. But we’ll see after Noah and Natsuha take Surgery for Engineers in the fall!

Being at Aravind has been truly inspEYEring. The past two and a half weeks have been incredibly dense but equally as meaningful. Our next steps at Hopkins include narrowing down to the most impactful and feasible needs to work on for the rest of the year!

It’s been real Madurai,

Cinnabids