Corneal Transplantation An Overview

Dr. Soosan Jacob , MS, FRCS, DNB, MNAMS is director and chief, Dr. Agarwal’s Refractive and Cornea Foundation (DARCF) and senior consultant, cataract and glaucoma services, Dr. Agarwal’s Group of Eye Hospitals, Chennai, India. She is a noted speaker widely respected for her innovative techniques and management of complex surgical scenarios. She conducts courses and delivers lectures in numerous national and international conferences; has been the recipient of IIRSI special gold medal, JRS waring medal for editorial excellence, ISRS Kritzinger memorial award, innovator’s award (Connecticut Society of Eye Physicians), ESCRS John Henahan award for young ophthalmologist, AAO international ophthalmologist education award, AAO international scholar award, AAO achievement award, ASCRS Top-Gun instructor award, UKSOS gold medal, AM Gokhale award and oration, Bruce Jackson oration, Harold Stein innovator lecture, Dr. TN Gopinathan Menon memorial oration award, Dr P R Mondal memorial oration award and is also a two time recipient of ASCRS golden apple award. She has delivered keynote lectures at various international and national conferences including the recent (2018) Swiss Society of Ophthalmology annual conference and 2019 annual conference of Ophthalmological Society of Sweden. She has been invited to teach her techniques and innovations by Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Miami, USA which is the number 1 ranked eye institute in the world.

In addition, Dr Jacob has won more than 50 prestigious international awards for her surgical videos on her innovations and challenging cases at prestigious international conferences in United States and Europe. She has authored 94 peer reviewed publications, more than 200 chapters in 34 textbooks and is editor for 17 ophthalmology textbooks and reviewer for many prestigious journals. She is chair of the multimedia editorial board AAO-ISRS, member ISRS executive committee, associate editor JRS, section editor (refractive surgery) - EyeNet (American Academy of Ophthalmology); council board member – Global Education and Research Society of Ophthalmology; head of cornea committee - Global Education and Research Society of Ophthalmology and is on editorial board of IJO, EyeNet (AAO), EuroTimes, IJKECD, OSN-AsiaPacific, Glaucoma Today, CRST Europe, TNOA-JOSR and Ophthalmology & Therapy.

Dr Jacob has special interest in cutting edge cataract, cornea, glaucoma, complex anterior segment reconstruction and refractive surgery. Her innovations, many of which have won international awards, include anterior segment transplantation, where cornea, sclera, artifical iris, pupil and IOL are transplanted enbloc for anterior staphyloma; suprabrow single stab incision ptosis surgery to enhance postoperative cosmesis; turnaround techniques for false channel dissection during Intacs implantation; glued endo-capsular ring, glued capsular hook and the paper clip capsule stabilizer for subluxated cataracts; stab incision glaucoma surgery (SIGS) as a guarded filtration surgery technique; contact lens assisted crosslinking (CACXL) for safely crosslinking thin keratoconic corneas; endo-illuminator assisted DMEK (E-DMEK), air pump assisted PDEK and host descemetic scaffolding for easier and better surgical results; PrEsbyopic allogenic refractive lenticule (PEARL) inlay for treating presbyopia, corneal allogeneic intrastromal ring segment (CAIRS) for keratoconus and other corneal ectasias; the Jacob modified technique for pre-descemetic DALK as a primary treatment for acute hydrops; sutureless SMILE lenticule assisted resurfacing with interface tattooing for limbal dermoid; white ring sign and the sequential segmental terminal lenticular side cut dissection for safe and effective lenticule extraction in SMILE surgery She has proposed a new classification of descemet’s membrane detachments into rhegmatogenous, tractional, bullous and complex detachments with a suitable treatment algorithm and a new technique of relaxing descemetotomy for tractional descemet’s detachment.

Dr Jacob’s surgeries and surgical techniques have often been editor’s choice in prestigious international ophthalmic websites (AAO/ ONE network, ISRS, Eyetube etc). She has two popular bimonthly columns, “Complications in Cataract and Refractive Surgery” and “Everything you want to know about” in the prestigious Eurotimes magazine published by ESCRS. She is also the first surgeon internationally to be featured in a dedicated webpage by the Eurotimes. She has her own surgical educational YouTube channel: Dr. Soosan Jacob with more than 6000 subscribers. Dr. Jacob is senior faculty for training postgraduate, fellowship and overseas doctors.

Her life and work have been featured on the Ocular Surgery News cover page, “5Q” interview (prestigious cataract and refractive surgery today - CRST), “Sound off” column (CRST) and “One Day in the Life of…” (CRST) and is also the first researcher internationally to be interviewed in the prestigious CRST “Researcher’s Column.”