UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

I had to ring the eye department about something this morning and whilst I was on the ophone to them they said they had a cancellation for a transplant on march 11th and do I want it, so I took it - eeek.

hope it was the right decision
lea
xox

I may be being dim here, but how are they going to know that they have a suitable match for you on that day?

As the cornea has no blood supply, in most cases there is no need for the donor tissue to be matched with the recipients when it comes to a corneal transplant/graft.

Where tissue typing is done for a corneal graft it is if it is a re-graft due to rejection or if there are/has been a blood vessel growing into the cornea.

Hope this helps.

So do cornea's last quite sometime before transplants then?

Sorry Lea, hijacking your thread - just never really thought about the ins and outs of transplants before as lucky enough not to be at that stage.

tis ok hun don't worry about it x

Its funny how thangs like that can happen:
"Thanks Andrew, am trying to look at it positivly but today failing. tomoro is a fresh day though x"
Never a truer word spoken......

Good luck for the 11th
Tom

The statistsic I have seen banded about suggest between 5 - 10% of people with KC ever progress to the point of requiring a graft and even fewewr requiring a graft in each eye.

Most of the consultants I have spoken to say grafts only last about 10 years, but if you have the chance to attend one of the KC Group confrences, local group meetings or the AGM you will encounter people with grafts of varying ages. There are those on the committee with grafts onlya few years old to those who's grafts are over 20 years old just like mine. I have met people with grafts that are 30 and 40 years old.

Therefore in both cases no one can really say how long a KC cornea will last before it needs grafting and no one can say how long a graft will really last.

Having taken a look online,
I think that donor corneas last up to a maximum of 25 days, depending on the method of preserving they use.
Which i agree beggars the question, how do they know that there will be one for you in nearly 7 weeks time?

I think as gareth said, they do not tend to blood match you, but they do try to get as best an age match as they can.

Tom

I think that they presume that viable tissue will be available and book theatre time. If the day comes and there is no tissue they can ways cancel. If the tissue were to turn up but there was no theatre then they would be stymied.

By and large the system does work.

Every good wish.

Andrew.

thanks Andrew for the explanation. it does make sense that they book theatre time for the transplant - it is easier to cancel than try and find space i guess. However it must be disappointing if the slot does get cancelled - hope this doesnt happen to you Lea. Good luck and i hope you get the outcome you want, from what i have read about the recovery it is going to be a long hard slog.