Epomec

Dr. Amar Agarwal

Consultant Ophthalmologist

INDIA

Amar Agarwal is the pioneer of Phakonit, which is Phako with a Needle Incision Technology. This technique became popularized as Bimanual phaco, Microincision cataract surgery (MICS) or Microphaco. He was the first to remove cataracts through a 0.7 mm tip with the technique called Microphakonit. He has also discovered No anaesthesia cataract surgery and FAVIT, a new technique to remove dropped nuclei. The air pump, which was a simple idea of using an aquarium fish pump to increase the fluid into the eye in bimanual phaco and co-axial phaco has helped prevent surge. This built the basis of various techniques of forced infusion for small incision cataract surgery. He has also discovered a new refractive error called Aberropia. He has also been the first to do a combined surgery of microphakonit (700 micron cataract surgery) with a 25 gauge vitrectomy in the same patient thus having the smallest incisions possible for cataract and vitrectomy. He is also the first surgeon to implant a new mirror telescopic IOL (LMI) for patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration. He has also been the first in the world to implant a Glued IOL. He also has brought out the technique of IOL Scaffold in which a three-piece IOL is injected into an eye between the iris and the nucleus to prevent the nucleus from falling down in posterior capsular ruptures. Hypersonic vitrectomy for cases of PC rupture was first done by him and he was the principal investigator for the first hypersonic vitrectomy cases done in the world.

Pre Descemet’s Endothelial Keratoplasty or PDEK was started by Prof Agarwal. Dr Agarwal has designed a new instrument called the Trocar anterior chamber maintainer in complicated cases, which helps give infusion through the anterior chamber and works like a trocar cannula. He has also started a new technique of iris suturing called Single pass Four Throw (SFT) pupilloplasty. Subsequenly he started Pinhole pupilloplasty to treat patients with high astigmatism and higher order aberrations.

Dr. Agarwal has performed more than 200 live surgeries at various conferences. His videos have won many awards at the film festivals of ASCRS, AAO and ESCRS. He has more than 250 peer review articles in top journals and has also written more than 80 books in Ophthalmology which have been published in English, Spanish, portugese and chinese. He is the Chairman and managing director of Dr.Agarwals group of eye hospitals which has 151 eye hospitals in 11 countries.

Dr. Muralidhar Ramappa

Clinician Scientist

INDIA

Dr. Ramappa is a distinguished clinician-scientist and a leading authority in pediatric corneal diseases and anterior segment developmental abnormalities. He heads the Cornea and Anterior Segment Services, the Institute for Rare Eye Diseases & Ophthalmic Genetics, and the Centre for COVID Eye Diseases Study at L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
Dr. Ramappa’s substantial contributions to the field include over 135 peer-reviewed publications, 18 academic textbook chapters, and more than 100 oral and poster presentations. He has received 40 national and international awards, including those from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).
He pioneered pediatric corneal transplantations, performing over 200 procedures annually at L V Prasad Eye Institute. His clinical research focuses on long-term outcomes of corneal grafting in children, comparative case cohorts of novel selective tissue transplantation procedures, and evaluating complications and outcomes of innovative techniques. Dr. Ramappa’s areas of expertise include rare eye diseases, ocular genetics, corneal imaging, herpetic infections, ocular drug delivery systems, and advanced pediatric cataract surgery using state-of-the-art intraocular lenses.
His laboratory-based work involves translational and clinical research on pediatric corneal diseases and genetic abnormalities. Dr. Ramappa has developed an innovative disruptive less invasive surgical technique called Selective Endothelialialectomy in Peters Anomaly (SEPA), which has been adopted by numerous pediatric surgeons for managing Peters anomaly cases. He is also investigating gene editing for corneal endothelial dystrophies, transcriptional developmental abnormalities of the cornea, and creating a single-cell cornea atlas using cell transcriptomics.
As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Ramappa actively engages in clinical research programs to validate the genetic basis of pediatric corneal diseases. He has published original research articles on various pediatric corneal diseases, including corneal dystrophies. Dr. Ramappa has also served as the principal investigator (PI) for numerous grants and clinical trials, such as a Phase II trial evaluating the effectiveness of topical NSAID eye drops in treating congenital hereditary endothelial dystrophy (CHED).

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