Orbis Took the 4Sight to Myanmar
December 6, 2019
Orbis, the flying eye hospital, recently took the Keeler 4Sight unit to Mandalay, Myanmar for both teaching staff and screening patients. One patient, Daw, shared her story:
It’s early morning on the third floor patient ward at Mandalay Eye Ear Nose Throat Hospital (MEENTH). Amidst the clinical activity and bustle of patients, family members and medical staff, Daw, 55, sits upright on her assigned bed, legs crossed, waiting to be discharged. Her eye patch had just been removed by an Orbis staff ophthalmologist in the clinic down the hall. The post-operative assessment revealed she now has 20/30 vision in the eye where the day before a dense, sub-capsular cataract had been removed.
“All at once the light came into my eye and everything is so clear now,” she said with a soft smile.
As a little girl, Daw was twirling a stick in her hand in her home village of Thantzinkon in Myanmar, when a sharp point of the wood punctured her eye. It wasn’t long before the wound healed, but in the last few years her sight has rapidly deteriorated. Initially presenting as a loss of vision in the eye where the trauma occurred years earlier, issues relating to Daw’s other eye, followed.
Daw has no children but assumes the primary role as caretaker of her mother and father. Recently she struggled to continue her day-to-day work buying and selling clothes at the local market. Her favorite colors are pink and green — however with cataracts it’s become increasingly difficult for her to distinguish between certain colors and patterns in the fabrics. Choosing which clothes she needs to purchase in Mandalay and resell in her home village started to get very tough for Daw. Her small shop, which offers ready-to-wear traditional Burmese clothing for adults and children, started to languish as a result of her imminent blindness. Recently she’d even stumbled on the staircase leading away from her home.
Referred by an eye doctor in her local village, Daw traveled forty miles to seek care in Mandalay at MEENTH. During the Orbis training program, she was selected for cataract surgery and an intra-ocular lens implant. Her case became a teaching opportunity on the Flying Eye Hospital. After descending the jet steps on the day of her surgery, Daw smiled broadly: “I feel very lucky to have surgery inside of a plane. I have never flown before — it was my first time. Thank you so much, Orbis.”
Besides resuming her work textiles, Daw is looking forward to reading letters, doing her daily walk, even watching television again without straining her eyes while sitting close to the TV set.
Orbis Flying Eye Hospital clinical crew members had alot of positive feedback about how easy the 4Sight unit is to use and how helpful it is as a teaching tool.
“Setting up the unit, putting it together, making the connections, it’s all very easy, intuitive, and only takes a few minutes.”
“This unit is very intuitive right out of the box, and even someone with no prior orientation to it, but ultrasound knowledge in general, will be able to obtain high quality scans with little trouble.”
“The scans are captured accurately and quickly, reducing delays in patient care. This is a great advantage for getting through screening day when there are so many patients with otherwise difficult-to-measure eyes.”
“Using to unit to teach is where this machine really shines. The scans are visually crisp and clear and afford "textbook" examples of what scans should look like. The echogram is well delineated and provides a clear representation of what is truly happening--making it ideal for demonstrating the various ocular interfaces.”
“Since some adjustments can be made after the scan is completed, it has important teaching value in demonstrating the effects of improper settings as well, such as errors that can be caused by improper gate placement, gain and threshold adjustments, eye types, and the like."
“The B-scan and other modes allow for similarly excellent teaching examples."
"It is a most exceptional tool in every way for our diagnostic teaching programs.”