Byline: SUSAN PHINNEY P-I reporter
Dr. Tisha Prabriputaloong gives sight to people with fading vision who thought they would soon be blind. She removes cataracts from babies who would have a bleak future without her intervention.
She travels to places rarely recommended by travel magazines to bring sophisticated eye procedures we take for granted in this country to people who regard them as miracles.
For the past two weeks she's been in Seattle learning how to do even more: organize and run an eye bank. She's been at SightLife, an internationally recognized organization founded by the Northwest Lions Foundation for Sight and Hearing.
Prabriputaloong, (pronounced praw-bree-put-along) is a native of Thailand, an ophthalmologist and cornea specialist who took advanced training at the University of California-San Francisco. Prabriputaloong moves like a hummingbird, layered hair flying. She could be a college student racing to classes. But when she talks, she's still, focused on your face, and when she's working with a microscope, cutting a cornea, her movements are barely visible.
Organ and tissue donations are not readily accepted in some cultures. Prabriputaloong said some believe that if they donate eye parts, they will be blind in their next life, for example.
The 'gift of life' is one of her favorite phrases when she's recruiting donors.
'Donation is a good thing. Better to give eyes and have an even better after-life,' she said with a smile. 'Donation is basic to most religions. And donations are good things.'
Prabriputaloong grew up in Thailand, the daughter of an ophthalmologist. She sometimes went to work with her mother and was about 5 when she decided to follow in her footsteps.
After graduate work, she practiced for about two years in Thailand before volunteering with ORBIS, a non-profit organization working to restore vision and improve eye health around the world. Her first assignments were in Bulgaria and Jamaica.
In June 2006, she joined ORBIS as a full-time staff member and spent the rest of the year working in Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria.
ORBIS has a flying eye hospital, a widebody DC-10, that's both a surgical center and training hospital. Leading physicians from all over the world volunteer their time and talents, usually for two weeks at a time. Several Seattle ophthalmologists have participated and the plane has visited Seattle.
Prabriputaloong is part of the permanent 22-person crew of physicians, nurses, biomedical engineers and a flight mechanic who keep ORBIS jetting around the globe, sharing knowledge and surgical skills.
Part of their mission is to teach doctors in other countries, introduce them to new techniques and give them hands-on experience in surgeries so they can then teach others. She said she can find a common language with most physicians, but interpreters are often needed for patients.
A local physician might bring his own patients and operate on them under Prabriputaloong's supervision, for example. It's self-sustaining and part of the ORBIS mission to raise eye health awareness.
And that's the reason this 34-year-old ophthalmologist has been in Seattle learning about all the pre-surgical steps involved in a cornea transplant.
She's learned how corneas are harvested from tissue donors and stored, how they're cut and shaped before use. She's learning about tongue-and-groove cuts that reduce the amount of sutures needed and speed healing, and getting lessons on the use of an Intralase Femtosecond laser - one designed originally for Lasik surgery, but modified for cornea transplanting.
Prabriputaloong is learning how to set up eye banks, information she can share with physicians in other countries and the government officials who may help with funding once they recognize the importance of nearby, well-stocked eye banks.
Eye banks are a rarity in many parts of the world. In some areas, the wait for a cornea transplant can be years.
Monty Montoya, president of the Northwest Lions Foundation, said Seattle supplied about 15 corneas to various ORBIS missions in 2006, and another 905 for transplants in the Pacific Northwest. He said a University of Washington physician who traveled to China on a mission carried four corneas with her.
'In some situations we can send corneas directly into a country as cargo on a major airline,' Montoya said. But they have to be monitored carefully and kept at a constant temperature of between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.
After her Seattle training, Prabriputaloong will return to Thailand to repack, then board the flying hospital for a tour of Malaysia. She said she has been impressed by the professionalism and passion of the people she's met in Seattle's non-profit community.
P-I reporter Susan Phinney
can be reached at 206-448-8397
or susanphinney@seattlepi.com.
LEARN MORE
For more information on ORBIS, go to orbis.org
For information about SightLife, go to sightlife.org
Cornea donors can register at livinglegacyregistry.org or they can register when they renew their driver's license.
