NEW DELHI: It did not seem like a night out of the ordinary, but when 70-year-old Sona Mishra got up at 3 a.m. to use the bathroom, she realised that she couldn't see anything with her right eye. Panicked, she contacted her doctor who had conducted her cataract operation six month ago. He told her that recovery was virtually impossible.

What Ms. Mishra, a resident of Noida, had experienced was a sudden, painless loss of vision in the right eye, a condition medically termed as central retinal artery occlusion.

But lucky for Ms. Mishra, her doctor's prediction about her condition was proved wrong and doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here were able to restore her vision through a relatively new operation technique called Neuro Interventional.

According to doctors, nearly 100 per cent of such patients end up with total loss of vision in the effected eye and at present the treatment modalities are hopeless at best. Massaging the eye or reducing the pressure of eyeballs are some methods that people use and it invariably leads to nothing more than loss of time.

"With the introduction of interventional neurovascular technique, which was used on Ms. Mishra, we put in fine tubes (catheters) inside the blood vessels and either suck out the clot or inject buster drugs exactly at the affected part,'' explained Shakir Husain, honorary consultant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, speaking about the unique operation which took the group two hours to conduct.

According to the treating doctor, ideally patients with this symptom should report within 6 to 8 hours of the attack so that treatment can be started within 12 hours of blockage.

Ms. Mishra had reported to the hospital 48 hours after the attack, which according to doctors made results of the treatment doubtful.

"One very important thing to understand about the treatment is the fact that retina cannot stand long duration of the lack of oxygen. Within the first hour, significant damage starts taking place and it is almost impossible to retrieve any useful vision after 12 hours. But nature has its own way and miracles do happen, which is what happened in Ms. Mishra's case,'' explained Dr. Husain.

Now with her eyesight restored, Ms. Mishra is waiting to go back home and enjoy the miracle.