Debdas Mukherjee: Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, Nov. 9: An eye surgeon here has created medical history of sorts by successfully removing a parasitic larva from the eye of a woman, restoring her eyesight.

Debdas Mukherjee, the surgeon, removed the worm-like parasite, by operating the eye of 25-five-year-old Saira Banu, who had come all the way from Kushmandi in South Dinajpur. “We found that the worm was buried behind the retina of the woman’s left eye. We removed it alive by surgery,” Mukherjee said. The four-mm-long larva has been sent for microbiological tests. The doctor is preparing a write-up on it for a medical journal.

Mukherjee said the larva, removed after a two-hour operation had been feeding on the woman’s blood. He was assisted by K. P. Saha. The doctors said Saira Banu got back her eyesight after the surgery. “We are keeping her under observation to ensure that her body is free from these parasites. The worm could have damaged her eyesight permanently and caused seizures if it had worked itself up to her brain,” Mukherjee said.

The doctors have a suspicion that the worm is gnathostoma, a parasite, which can invade both humans and animals. “Though the microbiological tests have not been very conclusive, we have downloaded pictures of gnathostoma from the Internet,” he said.

Mukherjee was a student of Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and later completed his FRCS before setting up a clinic here. He said Saira Banu had come to him after going blind in her left eye. “I decided to go ahead and operate, fully aware of the risks involved,” the doctor said.

“I had no idea that I would stumble upon such a rare affliction. Three similar cases have been reported in India, one from Calcutta and two from Sankara Netralaya in Chennai. But in those cases the parasites were dead,” Mukherjee said. He added that before publishing his study, he needed to inspect the people living in Saira Banu’s neighbourhood to find out if anyone else was affected with the same disease.