In the field of eye care ,treatment of irreversible loss of vision has emerged as a new area of interest.

Although Modern Medicine has some answers for this type of loss of vision .Recently somewhat effective is gene therapy around 10% of improvement which costs around INR Six Crores,and is difficult to pay for almost all the population here Earlier much hyped stem cell therapy proved totally unsuccessful.

Then comes the role of other Systems of Medicine to be explored.

More interesting is that these Systems of Medicines are collectively termed as Alternative Systems of treatment and accepted as such,in spite of the fact that many systems have vast literature many times that of today's Modern Medicine.

Although Alternative system literally means that if you do not find a treatment in Modern Medicine you can try these systems such as Ayurveda,Acupuncture or Homeopathy.

Then why not Integrated approach instead of Alternative approach?Integrated approach literally means that integration of knowledge from all systems of Medicine for successful treatment as for example nutritional aspect discovered by the Modern Medicine and advising patient on lines of Ayurveda as per constitution of patient.As in the Modern Medicine there is no approach for Constitution of patient.

In this time when patient is searching treatment options at this time many doctors of other systems have tried to find this treatment,some are genuinely offering treatment while some clinics have emerged claiming successful treatment of retinitis pigmentosa,macular degeneration and other incurable ailments without any experience to do so.

Most interesting aspect of this type of newly emerging self proclaimed doctors is that they do not have a proper record of treatment and still they are posing as doctors who are able to treat Retina and other issues where no treatment is available.

Many times patients have enquired here and I came to know that they have been fooled many times by such proclaimed healers.

So how to identify the genuine one in this field.

• Doctor should be atleast registered with one of the recognized systems of Medicine.
  There should not be fake degrees mentioned with the practitioners as for example some of doctors write MD (Acu) as their acupuncture qualification.Worldwide including China there is no such degree as MD Acupuncture.Great teachers and professors in Acupuncture also write as C.Ac. means Certificate course in Acupuncture.
• Besides the statement of patient there should atleast a result verified by gadgets of Modern medicine as O C T or visual fields etc.
• It will be better if the results are published in the National or International Journals of Medicine.
• If doctor is awarded for the work always check their credentials.
• Also evaluate the treatment response very initially,patient should respond as promised by the treating doctor.