POSITIVE DONOR RIM CULTURE IN PENETRATING KERATOPLASTY

A 3-year retrospective study on the risk factors of positive donor rim cultures in penetrating keratoplasty was performed. One thousand and ninety-seven consecutive donor rim cultures were reviewed from the per iod between June 1990 and October 1993 to determine the rate of cultur e positivity. The sex, age, diabetes status, use of respirator at time of death, cause of death, harvesting technique, storage time, and cor neal storage medium utilized for the donors with positive donor rim cu lture were compared to those for 100 randomly selected culture negativ e donor controls. Logistic analysis was performed to eliminate confoun ding effects. Forty-six of the 1,097 (4.19%) donor rim cultures were p ositive. We found an association between the in situ technique for don or harvesting and culture negativity (p = 0.03). None of the other don or characteristics was associated with culture positivity. None of the 46 recipients who received the positive culture corneas developed end ophthalmitis. In situ cornea harvesting promotes less contamination th an enucleation and enriched gentamicin and streptomycin storage medium may further decrease donor rim culture positivity.