Surgeons use one donor cornea in three transplant procedures

New customized corneal transplantation techniques can allow multiple patients to receive grafts derived from a single donor cornea, according to a study published in Archives of Ophthalmology.

Rasik B. Vajpayee, MS, FRCS, FRANZCO, and colleagues reported their experience using a single donor corneal tissue to perform three corneal transplantations. Surgeons divided the cornea, obtained from a 44-year-old donor, into three parts using a microkeratome and a trephine, according to the study.

In the first case, surgeons used automated lamellar therapeutic keratoplasty to transplant the anterior lamellar disc to a 40-year-old man with macular corneal dystrophy in the front two-thirds of his cornea.

The second case involved a 60-year-old man who developed pseudophakic bullous keratopathy after complicated cataract surgery. In this patient, surgeons transplanted the posterior lamellar disc using Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty. The third case involved a 5-year-old boy with chemical burns in his right eye that caused a limbal stem cell deficiency, which surgeons treated by transplanting the peripheral corneoscleral rim, according to the study.

At 3 months follow-up, visual acuity improved from 20/200 to 20/60 in the first patient, from 20/400 to 20/40 in the second patient and from counting fingers to 20/200 in the third patient, the authors reported.

"Our strategy of using a single donor corneal tissue for multiple patients opens up the possibility of optimal use of available donor corneal tissue and will reduce the backlog of patients with corneal blindness in countries in which there is a dearth of good-quality donor corneal tissue," the authors said in a press release.