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A programmed study on 5000 consecutive patients1 and a retrospective study on 137 blind students2 have shown that corneal blindness represents the second main cause of loss of vision in Jordan (Table I). It was interesting to note that 2c/< of patients seen in the ophthalmic clinic had keratoconus. Many of them were associated with spring catarrh.
Due to the support of the Surgical Eye Expedition International (SEE-INT), the International Eye Foundation, the Eye Bank of Aarhus-Denmark, and Eye Bank of Sri-Lanka, it was possible to perform 847 penetrating keratoplasties since the establishment of the Jordan Eye Bank in 1978.
The purpose of this article is to evaluate the results of corneal graft surgery and to analyze possible causes of rejection and complications.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Penetrating keratoplasty was performed on 847 patients. Follow up of the cases up to 9 years was possible in 331 cases (Table 2). Forty percent were operated at the King Hussein Medical Centre and were not included in the study. Cases with triple procedure were also excluded. Three types of donor material were used: whole eyes preserved in a moist chamber (death to surgery time = 45 ± 31 hours) at 4°C and corneoscleral segments preserved in either MK-medium 4°C (death to surgery time - 100 ± 55 hours) or culture medium (death to surgery time = 2 to 4 weeks) at room temperature. The age and sex distribution of operated cases had a male:female ratio of 1.4:1 (Table 2).
FACTORS WHICH MIGHT AFFECT THE POSTOPERATIVE RESULT
For the evaluation of keratoplasty results, the material was subdivided into two groups (Table 3).
The pathology was associated with corneal blindness by 10% of the cases (Table 4).
The number of keratoconus cases associated with or had a history of vernal...