Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Ocular Surgery News
Corneal transplantation has progressed from deep lamellar endothelial keratoplasty to Descemet’s stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty to Descemet’s membrane endothelial keratoplasty. In the process, the donor disc has progressively decreased in thickness to about 15 µm for DMEK, with donor Descemet’s membrane of 8 µm to 10 µm and corneal endothelium of about 5 µm. Placing it in perspective, the cling wrap used to seal food items is about 12.5 µm. Such decreased donor tissue thickness, a 97% reduction, introduces complexities to corneal transplantation never before seen in the anterior segment surgical arena.