Photographs will hold mirror to eye tumours

Have you ever imagined that a photograph on the social networking site, Facebook, can detect a deadly eye tumour? Doctors think it is possible. Not just that, a city-based doctor has started a campaign to identify cases of eye tumour using photographs and according to him, his biggest lab is Facebook.
Dr Ashwin Mallipatna, in-charge of retinoblastoma services, department of paediatric ophthalmology, Narayana Nethralaya, is providing cameras to nurses in rural hospitals which will help them identify the problems.

“Medically known as retinoblastoma, this is a kind of eye cancer detected among children. This is caused because the gene which has to control the multiplication of the cells in the body is absent. Thus, an uncontrolled growth of the cells leads to a tumour creation, which not only affects the vision if not treated, but could also spread to other parts of the body especially the brain,” said Dr Ashwin Mallipatna.

“The main reason for this is the lack of awareness and this is not only restricted to the rural areas but also prevalent in urban population,” said Mallipatna.

He along with his colleagues have chalked out a plan to reach rural Karnataka by using cameras and then identify the cancer with the help of the photographs taken in them. “A pilot project is almost finished in Bangalore. Our next step would be to provide nurses in rural hospitals with digital cameras using which they can take pictures of the children. We would analyse those pictures to detect the disease,” he said.

The awareness on this is very high among the people in the West. According to him, the first case was identified by a nurse in London while browsing through a photograph in Facebook. “A nurse in one of the hospitals, while going through the photos of one of her friend’s album, saw the photo of her child’s picture in which a white spot was found in the child’s eye,” he said.

Mallipatna says his future plans include spreading  of the rural programmes and providing cost-effective digital cameras to rural people, which would increase the detection of the cases. He also added that people could find such cases using the photograph. “If you spot a white spot instead of red in the eye, don’t panic but consult a doctor,” said Mallipatna.