Assessment of the Quality of the Donor Cornea before Transplantation

Overview

Transplantation of the cornea is often the only possible treatment of manyophthalmological diseases and injuries. The quality of the donor cornea determinesin a major way the success of transplantation and therefore the demands onits quality must be high.Objective: Assess how the vitality of the endothelium changes in relation to thetime which elapsed since the donor´s death after storage of the cornea in themedium (death/preservation time, DPT). If the vitality of the endothelium is poor,the oedema of the cornea persists at room temperature.Methods:The endothelium of the donor cornea was examined before transplantationunder a specularmicroscope Bio Optics (USA). According to DPT the corneaewere divided into three groups:lst group - 22 corneae where DPT is shorter than 5 hours2nd group - 33 corneae where DPT is 6-10 hours3rd group - 46 corneae where DPT was longer than 10 hoursResults:In the first group the corneae got rid of the oedema after 20 minutes atroom temperature and endothelial cells could be observed in detail. In the second group the corneae got rid of the oedema after 20 minutes but there were rareoedematous sites where the endothelial function was not adequate. In the thirdgroup even after long time at room temperature the cornea did not get rid of theoedema, and on examination it was very difficult to find a group of endothelialcells for evaluation.Conclusion: Corneae from group 1 have a totally vital endothelium, in the secondgroup there are sites on the cornea where the vitality of the endothelium is alreadyimpaired, in the third group the vitality of the entire endothelium is impaired.Fortransplantation corneae with aDPTshorter than 10 hours are suitable.With aDPTlonger than 10 hours they are less suitable or unsuitable for transplantation.

Key words:
keratoplasty, death/preservation time, corneal endothelium, specularmicroscope