Abstract

SA.09.06

Correlation between the duration of organ culture and the incidence of endothelial immune reactions

Philip Maier, Daniel Böhringer, Thomas Reinhard
Universitäts-Augenklinik Freiburg

Objective
During organ culture of corneoscleral discs the number of antigen presenting cells decreases. This might result in a decrease of endothelial immune reactions with increasing storage time. To investigate this hypothesis we performed a retrospective analysis of penetrating keratoplasties that were performed during the last 5 years.
Methods
All cases of penetrating keratoplasties (n=1278) were divided into two groups regarding the median of organ culture (21 days). These two groups were compared by a cox proportional hazards survival model regarding the incidence of endothelial immune reaction, clear graft survival and chronic endothelial cell loss following penetrating keratoplasty considering patient’s age at time of surgery, donor’s age and risk situation.
Results
We found that in the group with longer duration of organ culture statistically significantly less endothelial immune reactions occurred compared to the group with shorter storage time. However, for the duration of organ culture we did not find a statistically significant effect on clear graft survival or chronic endothelial cell loss.
Conclusions
Our results show that increased duration of organ culture leads to a lower incidence of endothelial immune reactions following penetrating keratoplasty. This might be explained by the decreasing number of antigen presenting cells in the corneoscleral discs during the course of organ culture.

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