Corneas from human donors are used to replace damaged tissue and treat corneal blindness, but there is a severe worldwide shortage of donor corneas. We conducted a phase 1 clinical study in which biosynthetic mimics of corneal extracellular matrix were implanted to replace the pathologic anterior cornea of 10 patients who had significant vision loss, with the aim of facilitating endogenous tiss...

Shortage of corneal grafts is common in many countries. The method presented here has been developed to relieve this situation and make it easier, especially from the psychological point of view, to obtain a license for excising corneas from cadavers. An 11 mm. corneal button is excised from the donor eye in situ with a Draeger electric rotor trephine and the donor eyes remain apparently norma...

Penetrating keratoplasty is the replacement of a diseased cornea with a full-thickness donor graft. In the last century, this 'gold standard' procedure was long established as the treatment of choice for various corneal diseases. The classical indications for a penetrating keratoplasty entailed optical, tectonic, therapeutic, and cosmetic issues. Over the past decade however, surgical advances ...

BACKGROUND CORNEAS NEEDED FOR KERATOPLASTY CAN BE HARVESTED USING TWO TECHNIQUES: whole globe enucleation and in situ excision of the corneoscleral disc. This study evaluates the rate of microbial contamination of the donor cornea organ culture medium according to the method of retrieval. METHODS All donor corneas of our cornea bank received between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2009 put i...

AIMS To describe a technique for posterior lamellar keratoplasty donor preparation. METHODS In an experimental study eight human donor research corneas were mounted onto an artificial anterior chamber and deep stromal pockets dissected. Four corneas were mounted in the standard endothelial side down orientation and dissected using standard instruments (group 1). Another four corneas were moun...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was assessing the possibility of experimental allogenic transplantation of cat cornea endothelial cells, multiplied in vitro, into the anterior chamber of the eyeball in recipient cats. The reason for undertaking the research is the need to develop a method that would help in the cornea treatment in animals with corneal opacification following cataract su...

Purpose. To evaluate Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) as an adjunct to traditional slit lamp examination of donor corneas with suspected Anterior Stromal Opacities. Methods. Seven corneas suspected of having anterior stromal opacities by slit lamp examination were evaluated with FD-OCT. Each cornea was evaluated to confirm the presence of opacity and, if present, the depth o...

PURPOSE To investigate microbial contamination of the transport medium. Examination of corneoscleral rims is not included in this series. METHODS Transport media of 63 consecutive grafts done at Tennent Institute of Ophthalmology, Glasgow, were collected for microbial examination. RESULTS None of the culture plates showed any growth after prolonged culture, and microscopy was negative in 10...

A 40-years-old male patient with a corneal scar secondary to perforating eye injury had undergone ipsilateral rotational autokeratoplasty in our clinics. The corneal scar involved the pupillary area. The patient had a preoperative visual acuity of counting fingers. The patient's cornea was trephined with a 0.5 mm temporal decentration. The 8.0 mm autograft was rotated approximately 180° to relo...

Introduction: Recipients of corneal transplants are at risk of healthcare-associated infections, which, apart from other causes of surgical site infections, may also occur as a result of the transfer of infected corneal tissue. In this study we assessed the risk of bacterial and fungal infections based on the results of routine microbiological testing of cornea preservation fluid samples. Mater...