Availability of donor corneal tissue for transplantation

The utilization rate of available donor corneas is very low almost everywhere. The present work was undertaken to study the rate of acceptability of donor corneas in a city eye bank in India. Donor eyes were evaluated under slit lamp examination and tissue quality was categorized as: very good; good; fair; and poor following the guidelines laid down by the Eye Bank Association of America in 1992. One hundred and eight eyes (from 54 donors) were studied. The mean age of the donors was 75.9 years (range 30-97 years). Thirty-nine (36%) eyes were of very good to good quality and of these 37 (34.3%) were acceptable for grafting either for optical or therapeutic purposes. Sixty-one (56.4%) eyes were not acceptable owing to fair to poor tissue quality. Four (3.7%) eyes were discarded on medical grounds and six (5.6%) were discarded both because of fair to poor tissue quality and on medical grounds. Twenty-three of 50 tissues (46%) available from donors aged 75 years or younger were acceptable while 14 of 58 (24.1%) tissues from donors over 75 years were acceptable.