ABSTRACT
Objective:
To evaluate the correlation between donor cornea endothelial cell morphology, epidemiological features of the donor and time of death in terms of necessity of specular microscopy (SM) in eye bank.
Materials and Methods:
SM data acquired from Dr. Lütfi Kırdar Kartal Training and Research Hospital Cornea Bank between 2010 and 2012 were retrospectively evaluated.
Results:
One thousand one hundred eighty cornea tissues were excised from 606 donors. The mean age of the donors was 40.11±15.51 years. Four hundred forty-nine (74.1%) donors were male and 157 (25.9%) donors were female. The mean duration of corneal excision was 1.52±0.6 hours after the time of death. The mean endothelial cell density (ECD) was 2852.07±542.15 cells/mm2 and there was no significant difference with respect to gender (p>0.05). According to age groups, the endothelial cell density was highest at age 20 years and below, and there was a significant difference compared to the other age groups (p<0.001).The mean cell area (MCA) was 367.86±86.30 µm2; the hexagonality rate was 49.29±7.76 (%); the coefficient of variation (CV) was 31.52±6.37 and there was a statistically significant correlation between these variables and age (p<0.001).The MCA was significantly different between males and females (p<0.05), and there was no correlation between gender-hexagonality or gender-CV (p>0.05). According to the time of death and time of corneal excision, there was no significant difference in ECD, MCA, CV, and hexagonality values between the groups (p>0.05).Seventy-nine percent of the donors with endothelial cell density less than 2000cells/mm2 were younger than the age of 60 years and 78% of the donors over the 61 ages had a number of endothelial cells more than 2000cells/mm2.
Conclusion:
Although morphological parameters of donor cornea show significant correlation with age, distribution of the donors with endothelial cell density less than 2000 cells/mm2 suggests that the evaluation of donor cornea with SM should be performed as a standard procedure before keratoplasty.
