Calling on the community to donate corneas after death

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Le Xuan Cung, Head of the Cornea Department - Central Eye Hospital, the patient who just received a corneal transplant is a 50-year-old male from Hanoi, one of hundreds of cases that have been registered for 5-6 years waiting for a corneal transplant. The patient has a corneal disease after trauma. Corneal damage often causes irritation, causing the patient a lot of pain, affecting aesthetics, work and life.

The corneal source for transplantation for this patient was taken from a male donor, 40 years old, in Bac Giang, with good corneal quality.

After the transplant, the patient's eyes were stable, continued treatment for inflammation, postoperative infection and use of anti-rejection eye drops. Vision will gradually recover after about 1 - 2 months. For this patient, the corneal transplant resolved the eye pain caused by corneal disease.

Kêu gọi cộng đồng hiến giác mạc sau khi qua đời - Ảnh 1. — Associate Professor, Dr. Le Xuan Cung and the surgical team performed the corneal transplant.

Associate Professor, Dr. Cung Hong Son said that corneal transplants at the Central Eye Hospital have been performed since 2007, but so far only about 3,000 patients have been indicated for transplants. Of these, 50% of corneal transplants were from voluntary donors in the provinces, with the most being Ninh Binh and Nam Dinh. Many patients received corneal transplants from corneas donated by foreign organizations.

Corneas are only collected after the donor has passed away. The best time to collect corneas is within 6-8 hours after the donor has died. To date, there have been 961 cornea donors nationwide. The youngest donor was 4 years old and the oldest was 107 years old.

At the Central Eye Bank, there are currently about 1,000 people registered to wait for corneal transplants and most of them have to wait 5-6 years for a transplant due to lack of donated corneas.

"We hope that the registration for cornea donation after death will be widely spread in the community, to give more opportunities to bring light to thousands of people waiting for cornea transplants," Dr. Son expressed.

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