Eye Donation: factors affecting donation rates in Aotearoa New Zealand

Every year in Aotearoa New Zealand several hundred patients require a corneal transplant. This may be because their cornea is scarred, cloudy or too thin to allow good vision. While we await the invention of the fully fledged laboratory-grown cornea, our principal option to treat these patients is using corneal tissue from a deceased donor for keratoplasty. This can include a number of different surgical procedures that encompass contemporary corneal transplantation, including penetrating keratoplasty (PK), deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK), Descemet stripping (automated) endothelial keratoplasty (DS(A)EK) and Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK). All of these procedures require the use of corneal tissue from deceased donors, obtained and processed by the New Zealand National Eye Bank (NZNEB).