Corneal graft surgery: A monocentric long-term analysis

To investigate indications, outcomes and changes in clinical patterns of keratoplasty surgery in a Spanish tertiary eye center.

Vissum Instituto Oftalmológico, Alicante, Spain.

A retrospective review was performed on clinical records of patients that underwent any kind of corneal transplant from 2001 to 2017 in the study center. Inclusion criteria involved the presence of detailed preoperative examination, surgical report and at least 12 months follow-up after the surgery. A statistical analysis was performed on the indications for keratoplasty, survival rates, type of graft failures, and visual outcomes.

A total of 907 keratoplasties procedures were identified. About 432 penetrating keratoplasty (PK), 148 deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK), and 134 endothelial keratoplasty (EK) met the inclusion criteria. Cumulative survival rate ranged from 94% to 69% in a 1-year period and from 85% to 45% in a 5-years period according to the different graft types. The main cause for failure was immunological rejection for PK, surface diseases for DALK and primary graft failure for EK. Postoperative visual function improved for all the surgical techniques.

Corneal transplant is a challenging surgery still complicated by a relevant risk of failure. Our study offers a useful opinion of the current trends on keratoplasty in our country, where the outcomes of the grafts differ considerably in relation to the indications and the different surgical techniques, with lamellar procedures that showed higher rates of success and better visual outcomes than full-thickness grafts.