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ESCRS promotes European registry for corneal transplantation
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LISBON, Portugal — A new European Cornea and Cell Transplantation Registry, co-funded by the EU Health Program and the ESCRS, has been set with the aim of creating a large multinational database for corneal transplantation in Europe.
“It is a unique opportunity to monitor and compare outcomes, gather information on practice patterns, evaluate the outcome data of new surgical procedures and give a realistic picture of expected outcomes,” Mor Dickman, MD, said. “On a personal level, it is a great incentive to promote quality improvement, providing benchmarks for comparing and demonstrating good practice.”
National registries already exist in three countries in Europe: the U.K., the Netherlands and Sweden, all three established in the mid-1990s.
“There are lessons we have learned from these registries,” Dickman said.
All three registries show an increase in corneal transplantation procedures, particularly of deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty and endothelial keratoplasy (EK). In the Netherlands, the integration of EK within the national health care system has made numbers rapidly grow.
“All three registries report a significantly higher failure rate of EK as compared with PK at 2 years, but long-term survival is comparable and visual results are significantly better,” Dickman said.
Early failure of EK is mostly related to the surgeon’s experience, he pointed out, while failure of PK is, in the vast majority, due to rejection.
The Swedish registry contains 15,000 records dated until 2016, including patient-reported outcomes, which is also a valuable element for evaluation.
Full information on the ECCTR registry can be found at http://www.ecctr.org/ecctr-database. – by Michela Cimberle
Reference:
Dickman M. European registry for quality improvement in corneal transplantation surgery. Presented at EuCornea; Oct. 6-7, 2017; Lisbon.
Disclosure: Dickman reports no relevant financial disclosures.