Abstract
Purpose :
It would be a logistical and surgical advantage to have corneal grafts for Descemet’s Membrane Endothelial Keratoplasty (DMEK) prepared prior to surgery, for example at the supplying eye bank. Here, we retrospectively determined whether clinical performance is negatively affected by pre-stripping of DMEK grafts.
Methods :
We reviewed clinical charts of patients whose donor corneas had been stripped 24 hours prior to surgery or immediately prior to surgery. Best-corrected visual acuity, central corneal thickness using Scheimpflug analysis and endothelial cell counts using specular microscopy were compared 3 months postoperatively between a group of 35 patients who received pre-stripped tissue and 40 patients who received tissue prepared on the day of surgery.
Results :
No clinically meaningful or statistically significant differences were recorded at baseline between the pre-stripped group and the control group with regards to donor age (70±9 vs. 69±9 years; p=0.63), donor endothelial cell density (2485±338 vs. 2506±168 cells/mm2; p=0.74), storage time (16±6 vs. 14±5 days; p=0.1), patient age (70±12 vs. 69±10 years; p=0.77), visual acuity (logMAR 0.66±0.21 vs. 0.59±0.21; p=0.18) or corneal thickness (638±64 vs. 624±50 μm; p=0.3). Also, no statistical differences were observed between the two groups at three months postoperatively with regard to visual acuity (logMAR 0.29±0.17 vs. 0.26±0.16; p=0.42), corneal thickness (506±35 vs. 521±44 μm; p=0.13), and corneal endothelial cell density (1486±356 vs. 1466±290 cells/mm2; p=0.8).
Conclusions :
We found no evidence that the use of pre-stripped DMEK grafts is inferior to same-day preparation in organ cultured corneas.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.