Lithuanian Doctors Help To Save Georgian Girl's Eyesight
A distant plain country with little sun, yet glowing with human kindness. A country whose doctors can do miracles and restore eyesight. This picture of Lithuania has been imprinted on the mind of a Georgian family of Tea Kantaria and Valerian Khizanishvili, the largest Lithuanian daily “Lietuvos rytas” reports. Tea and Valerian’s three-month-old daughter Nuki underwent a complicated eye surgery in Vilnius in January, during which her eyesight was saved. An English teacher Tea Kantaria and her husband, an artist Valerian Khizanishvili cried for joy when their daughter was born in Tbilisi on 13 of November last year.
However, the little Nuki was so eager to see the world that she was born prematurely – on the sixth month of pregnancy.
The baby was more than two months old when a Tbilisi-based doctor Zaza Khotenashvili diagnosed retinopathy – an insidious disease that may cause a complete loss of vision.
None of the Georgian hospitals have the necessary medical equipment to treat retinopathy of premature babies. Only last December, under the initiative of the Lithuanian Embassy to
Once retinopathy starts to develop, the child must be operated within 72 hours.
Dr. Khotenashvili advised Nuki’s parents to go to
“I did not know what to do. I felt half dead, half alive. But the telephone conversation with Doctor Rasa Bagdonienė helped me calm down”, the 29-year-old Kantaria recalls.
The need to obtain a Schengen visa was another obstacle to reach
The Lithuanian Embassy in
The family arrived in
Today Nuki is one of roughly 500 premature babies whose eyesight was saved by doctors Rasa Bagdonienė and Rasa Sirtautienė.
Eye operations on retinopathy have been carried out in
“At first we knew nothing about how retinopathy occurs, so we took a lot of pictures, which we brought with us to international conferences and consulted the other specialists about the methods of treatment,” Dr. Bagdonienė recalls.
Now Lithuanian doctors share experience with the eye disease specialists not only from neighboring countries but also from
Dr. Bagdonienė and Dr. Sirtautienė have received the Lithuanian Science Award for their accomplishments in the prevention of blindness.
Under their initiative, the first World Congress on Retinopathy of Premature Babies was held in
Retinopathy is a key cause for losing eyesight among premature babies.
Normally the baby is born at 39 to 40 weeks gestation, but an increasing number of babies come to this world prematurely, at 26 to 28 week.
Ocular blood vessels in premature infants are not well developed. When such a baby is born, the risk of blood vessels growing amiss is very high. The nearby connective tissue may grow faster and fill in the interior of the eyeball, causing the retina detachment. As a result, the child loses sight forever.
Retinopathy is difficult to determine at birth. The disease usually occurs and is detected on the second to third month of the baby’s life. Therefore, premature babies must be constantly monitored.
In curing retinopathy, hours matter. Any delay in surgery may cause the child to remain blind for the rest of his/her life.
Source: lrytas.lt, Embassy of Lithuania
