Life of corneal graft

[yasirraza]

Hi everyone,i was diagonised with KC 8 months ago,my right eye was affected badly and left eye was partially affected so i had to go for a CXL treatment in my left eye and one and a half months ago i had a corneal transplant in my right eye and my vision is getting better quite good but i have heard that life of corneal graft is 20-30 years,is that true and vision in my left eye is 20/30 without glasses or contact lenses,but with glasses its 20/20 so i want to ask if there is any treatment to bring my lef eye to 20/20 without glasses.

[Anne Klepacz]

Hi Yassiraza and welcome to the forum,
The life span of grafts seems to vary. Mine are 25 and 23 yrs old and still going strong, and I know of a couple of people with grafts over 40 yrs old. We also have members who have had successful regrafts at around the 25 year mark. Did you have a penetrating graft (PK) or a partial (DALK). In theory, DALKs should have an even longer lifespan as only part of the cornea is replaced, although there probably isn't enough long term data yet to back that up with concrete evidence.
As for the left eye, if you get perfect correction with glasses, then I'm not sure there's much benefit in looking for other (potentially risky) interventions. Your CXL should have stopped any progression in that eye.
All the best
Anne

[Andrew MacLean]

Eight and six, but still going strong.

[yasirraza]

I was undergone with penetrating karatoplasty(PK) in my right eye,although my vision is improving very quickly now i have some more questions,so if anyone can help me it will be very helpfull.
Will i need corneal transplant in my left eye also in the future?
For how long vision will improve in my right eye?
and for how much time i should avoid touching my eye and what if accidently
my eye gets hurt(like someone accidently hits me) so how much time should i avoid eye to get hurt.
and my vision in left eye is -2.5,+2.0 at 90 degree,so will soft contacts will work or i will need RGP
if i want to switch to contacts.

[Anne Klepacz]

I'll have a go at some of your questions and hope others will have answers as well.
Crosslinking should stop progression in your left eye, so the answer should be no. And I think it's only something like 5-10% of those who have a graft in one eye who get to the stage of needing a graft in the other, even without crosslinking.
It's great that you're already seeing a lot of improvement in your grafted eye. It could continue to change for the next 6-9 months. And it could change again when you have your sutures out, so that's the point at which you'll know what the final vision is.
A 'touch' (like wiping away excess eye drops) is probably fine, but rubbing the eye needs to be avoided for ever! And I believe a grafted eye is always more fragile than an ungrafted one, so again avoiding getting hit is for ever.
I hope one of our experts can answer your question about soft lenses.
Anne