Why Are Corneal Transplants So Successful?
Corneal transplant operations are the most successful of all transplant procedures, with a 95 percent success rate. The cornea consists of a fingernail-like substance, so no blood flow is involved. Rejection due to blood incompatibility causes most rejections of other transplant tissue. Transplants may fail because of injury, poor donor tissue, glaucoma, infection, poor wound healing, or graft rejection. If topical or systemic steroids are administrated, most rejections can be stopped. A patient is no more likely to reject a cornea at two days, two months, two years or 20 years. But it never really becomes a part of the recipient’s body. Therefore, patients are counselled to check for rejection every day of their lives with the “RSVP” method: R — redness; S — sensitivity to light; V — vision loss; and P — pain, in the eye or a headache. Unlike organs, corneas may be preserved up to a month in a saline solution before transplantation. Corneas may be harvested from cadavers of people
