Excision of the donor cornea instead of enucleation

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 normal looking. These excised corneas without sclerocorneal rims are placed in adequate without sclerocorneal rims are placed in adequate storage media for long-term cryopreservation according to Capella, Kaufman, and Robbins or for short-term storage according to McCarey and Kaufman. The preliminary results are promising and the technique seems not to be too delicate or complicated to be carried out by an experienced eye bank technician. It has improved our possibilities for storing donor corneas and for collecting many tissue-typed corneas in our eye bank.