Donor Risk Factors and Environmental Conditions Associated With Poor-Quality Corneas: An Analysis of the Central Eye Bank of Iran (2018–2021)
Fatemeh Javadi, Zahra Khorrami, Sadra Ashrafi, Mohammad Abolhosseini, Mozhgan Rezaei Kanavi, Sare Safi- Ophthalmology
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the donor risk factors and environmental conditions associated with poor-quality corneas using the database of the Central Eye Bank of Iran over 4 years.
Methods:
This cohort study was conducted on the recorded data of all donated corneas at the Central Eye Bank of Iran database from March 2018 to March 2022. Donors' characteristics and tissue variables were extracted from the database. The final corneal quality was determined based on slitlamp biomicroscopic observations and the results of specular microscopy. Environmental variables were also obtained from reliable resources. Risk factors for poor-quality corneas were calculated using logistic mixed-effect regression analysis. All analyses were performed with STATA 17.0. The significance level of 0.05 was considered for all the analyses.
Results:
The data of 20,625 eyes of 10,601 donors were evaluated. We found that donor age had an inverse correlation with endothelial cell density (r = −0.28,
Conclusions:
This study revealed that the cause of donor death, obesity, donor comorbidities, pseudophakia, and environmental factors could affect the corneal quality and make the donated corneas less suitable for transplantation.