hydrops

[GarethB]

Graft life span is difficult and often 10 years is quoted with no mention of waht happens after that.

Despite this my grafts are over 20 yeasr old and going stron and there are others here with grafts much older than mine. I have even met people with grafts that are over 30 years old.

Unfortunatly no one can predict how long they will last and what the outcome will be.

For the first few years post graft I wore glasses and then for about 5 yeasr needed no vision correction at all before returning to glasses for a number of years and now back on contact lenses.

[tneedham]

Hi Sarah

22 is quite young by all accounts, but i was 28 when i had it done. I was told that the main reasons for not having the graft at a young age was that a young persons immune system is stronger and therefore more likely to reject the donor cornea, however anti rejection medication is getting better.
My hope was that if life expectancy is just 10 years, then in 10 years time there will hopefully be more advanced medicine.
It was quite an easy decision to have the graft as my hydrops was quite bad and i had corneal scarring from my lenses. I had almost no useful vision left in that eye so i felt i had little to lose.
Having quite acute KC in my other eye as well meant that if i left it for too long my other eye might get too bad for me to cope through the healing process (which became the case when my other hydrops happened at 6 months post graft, but luckily just a week after starting to wear glasses ) it was seen by the consultant that if i had good vision in the other eye then they probably would not put me forward for the surgery as i could cope quite well with the one.

At the moment, i am trying a scleral lens in my hydrops eye again, the vision is not very good and some days i prefer to just go without, i can just about make out the top line with the lens in. I think for me now, i will have to keep monitering the eye and hope that the vision improves over time. Ultimately, i am getting by with the probability that i will have a second graft as soon as my grafted eye is healed enough.

This post has probably been a bit heavy so i will leave you with this.....
After the hydrops and before i had the graft i completely lost my self confidence and outgoing nature due to the loss of vision. This graft has completely changed my life

Tom

[GarethB]

KC is such a 'bespoke condition' unfortunatly there are exceptions, my grafts were when I was 18 for the right eye and 19 for the left eye.

I sometimes think it is harder going for a graft later in life because of the familly and work commitments we need to consider the older we get.

Bottom line is there is more information, better treatments and excellent support available now regardless of which route we choose to take to manage our KC.