Ophthalmologist Dr Atul Kamath at Yenepoya Medical College & Hospital, Deralakatte, Mangaluru Wins an International Award for his presentation on the topic “Impact of Ocular Care Training of Nursing Staff on Incidence of Ocular Surface Disorder among Intensive Care Patients”. He won the “European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) Trainee Bursary Award” for aiding training to prevent eye morbidity, for the highest scoring accepted free paper with complimentary registration at the 41st Congress of the ESCRS held from 8-12 September 2023 in Vienna, Austria
Mangaluru: Dr Atul Kamath, an ophthalmologist at Yenepoya Medical College & Hospital, Derlakatte, Mangaluru has won the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) Trainee Bursary Award. for his study on the need to train ICU nursing staff to prevent eye morbidity. He presented the study, “Impact of Ocular Care Training of Nursing Staff on Incidence of Ocular Surface Disorder among Intensive Care Patients” at the 41st Congress of the ESCRS, held from 8-12 September 2023 in Vienna-Austria.
Speaking to Team Mangalorean, Dr Atul said, “Ophthalmologists from all over the world applied and participated in this conference and this year about 20,000 experts with 15,000 ophthalmologists and 5,000 allied health staff participated. The study was undertaken along with my wife Dr Aditi Pai, also an ophthalmologist, and under the guidance of Dr Indravan Vasava, Assistant Professor, Baroda Medical College and Sir SayajiRao Hospital, Vadodara. The study was undertaken during the second wave of Covid-19 when hospitals were seeing a high rate of ICU admissions and patients were ventilated and comatose”.
Dr Atul Kamath with his Wife Dr Aditi Pai Kamath, also an Ophthalmologist
“We noticed that most patients started having severe eye problems like Lagophthalmos, which is incomplete closure of the eyelids, due to which patients develop exposure to Keratitis, which is the inflammation of the cornea. This is one of the causes of permanent blindness. Patients also developed discharge, watering and redness of the eyes. All of these conditions are reversible if detected early and given prompt treatment. But due to the extremely high volume of patients admitted, all these eye signs went unnoticed and even after patients recovered they had some amount of eye morbidity,” added Dr Atul Kamath
He further said, ” Hence, a study was conducted and 20 nursing staff in Vadodara were part of it. They were trained for 30 days on eye care, to understand the danger signs and to inform an ophthalmologist if they saw any of it. The result was that we immediately saw a 2.5 times improvement and the eye problems were reduced dramatically. The study is relevant and there is a need for a standardized protocol in the world to train nurses to prevent eye morbidity”.
About Dr ATUL KAMATH -MBBS, MS
I have an Under-graduation (MBBS) from K S Hegde Medical Academy, Mangaluru; an Indian Council of Medical Research grant project as an undergraduate (ICMR); Post-graduation (MS, Ophthalmology) from M. P. Shah Government Medical College, Jamnagar, Gujarat; and completing cataract & IOL fellowship at Sankara Eye Hospital, Coimbatore from 2018- 2020, presently Dr Atul Kamath is a Consultant Ophthalmologist & phaco-refractive surgeon at Yenepoya medical college & Hospital, Deralakatte, Mangaluru.
He has participated in nearly 10 research projects., and has 11 publications to his credit. Has Won 2nd place award in the Prestigious Leela Krishnamurthi award at the 31st annual conference of biomedical scientists; has presented several papers, e-posters, physical posters, and videos in international, national and state conferences from KOSCON 2018, 2020. AIOS 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. APAO 2019, 2022, ESCRS 2022.
He has carried out several projects on eye donation, thyroid-based eye diseases and Community Ophthalmology (especially during the COVID-19 times; also conducted an environment-related project & research related to global warming which was published in Euro Times & EyeSee Italian magazine; and also a Reviewer of 1 indexed journal
Dr. Atul says, “I am a keen learner, and I am extremely thankful to my mentors for guiding me every day. Being from a developing country, I aim at providing state-of-the-art management and care cost-effectively in the field of cataract & ocular trauma”.
