Corneal donor tissue can be safely stored for 11 days without negatively impacting the success of a transplant, a clinical trial has shown. Donor corneas, the eye's clear outer covering, are generally not used for surgery if they have been preserved for longer than seven days. Expanding the window in which donor tissues can be considered suitable "by even just a few days" should help safeguard quality donor tissue and access to vision-saving transplantation procedures, the researchers said.
For the study, appearing in an Ophthalmology journal ,the team looked at three-year graft success rates among a total of 1,090 individuals (1,330 eyes) who underwent cornea transplant via Descemet's stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty by 70 surgeons at 40 surgical sites. Overall, the three-year success rates were the same for corneas preserved for eight-to-14 days compared with up to seven…
