Amar Alwitry
The Inventor.

I’m Amar Alwitry. I’m a Consultant Ophthalmologist and arguably one of the foremost ophthalmology medico-legal experts in the UK.  I created Cannusafe because I have seen, far too many times, what happens when a cannula detaches inside a patient’s eye.

Over the course of my medico-legal work, I have opined on more than thirty cases of patients who suffered avoidable harm - some of them losing vision permanently - because a cannula came off a syringe at the wrong moment, in the wrong place. In every case, breach of duty has been hard to deny. Each of those cases is one I will never forget, because each represents a person whose life was changed by a failure of a piece of equipment so basic that almost no one outside the operating theatre would even know it was a risk. It is heartbreaking to see the same issue happening again and again over many years in patients who would have otherwise had a great outcome.

Of equal concern is what these cases revealed about reporting. None were reported to the surgical pack providers or the viscoelastic manufacturers, keeping them in the dark about the problem. None were reported to the MHRA either. The published incident data tells only a fraction of the real story.

The clinical literature has documented this problem for more than a decade. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists has issued safety alerts. Surveys of surgeons show that the great majority of us have personally experienced cannula detachment, and have seen patients harmed by it. And yet, until now, no adequate solution existed. Luer locks still fail. Some viscoelastic suppliers have applied safety devices to their syringes, but that fails to address the four or five other syringes used in every cataract case, for balanced salt solution, intracameral antibiotics, mydriatics, miotics and anaesthetic.

I have a GMC-mandated duty to advance patient safety, and so I decided to embark upon a mission to stop this complication and protect patients worldwide. I wanted to leave a legacy of safety.

Cannusafe was born. It is simple, takes around one second to apply, requires no training, doesn’t involve the surgeon at all, and physically prevents a detached cannula from entering the eye. It also addresses the mandatory syringe labelling obligations that every operating theatre is required to meet, eliminating the need for a separate label component and minimising the risk of medication error — a clear two-for-one win.

I built Cannusafe because the avoidable harm I have seen is entirely avoidable, and we have the rare opportunity of truly abolishing a complication related to human error. Patient safety is the entire reason this device exists. Everything commercial follows from that, not the other way around.

I am a surgeon first. Cannusafe is what I built because no one else had.

If you are a surgeon, a procurement lead, a pack manufacturer, a distributor or a regulator, I would welcome a conversation. This problem is solvable. The solution exists. The only remaining question is how quickly we get it to every patient who needs it.

— Amar Alwitry FRCS FRCOphth MMedLaw Inventor and Director, Cannusafe Ltd