Thirty years of penetrating keratoplasty in Israel

We studied the indications for keratoplasty and their changes during 30 years in Israel by retrospective evaluation of pathologic records of 1,018 corneal buttons (from 1961 to 1990). The population included 634 (62.3%) male patients and 384 (37.7%) female patients. Keratoconus (n = 222, 21.8%) was the most common indication, followed by corneal graft failure (n = 113, 11.1%), herpetic infections (n = 95, 9.3%), ocular trauma (n = 87, 8.5%), scarring (n = 74, 7.3%), pseudophakic bullous keratopathy (n = 72, 7.1%), nonherpetic infections (n = 71, 7.0%), and other indications. Whereas ocular infections were the most common indications for keratoplasty before 1970, keratoconus has been the most common indication since 1970. Pseudophakic bullous keratopathy became the second most common indication (13.8%) between the years 1981 and 1990. The number of keratoplasties increased in Israel during the past three decades, and the low percentage of pseudophakic bullous keratopathy is related to the types of intraocular lenses that we implanted in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.