Older donor corneas successful

Corneas from donors older than 65 years of age do as well after ten years as those from younger donors, report researchers from the Cornea Donor Study, a large study conducted under the auspices of the US National Eye Institute.

That study, involving 80 clinical centres across the US, compared graft survival rates for corneas from two donor age groups, aged 12-65 and aged 66-75. The study enrolled 1,090 people eligible for penetrating keratoplasty ranging in age from 40 to 80 years. Two-thirds of patients had Fuch's dystrophy while most of the remainder had pseudophakic corneal oedema.

The current study is a follow-up of the original study that followed patients for five years. The five-year success rate was identical for older and younger donor corneas. However, recipients of older donor tissue appeared have a slightly higher risk of endothelial loss.

At ten years post-transplant, success rates were similar for both donor groups. The success rate remained steady at 75 percent for the vast majority of donors ages 34-71. But it increased to 96 percent for donors age 12-33, and decreased to 62 percent for donors age 72-75.

"The cell loss data parallels the graft survival data, but we don't yet know if a given number of cells at five years is predictive of graft failure at 10 years," said Jonathan Lass, M.D., professor of ophthalmology at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case MedicalCentre in Cleveland and medical director of the study's cornea image analysis reading centre. That analysis is being done and will be released at a later date.

The new study data appeared in the November 2013 issue of the journal Ophthalmology.