EXAMINATIONS OF THE OCCURRENCE OF CORNEAL TRANSPLANT ULCERATION BY USING HISTOLOGICAL AND IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZED ORGAN CULTURED DONOR MATERIAL

97th DOG Annual Meeting 1999

P53
EXAMINATIONS OF THE OCCURRENCE OF CORNEAL TRANSPLANT ULCERATION BY USING HISTOLOGICAL AND IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZED ORGAN CULTURED DONOR MATERIAL

F. Hoffmann¹, P.K. Bischoff¹, M. Madauß², S. Clemens¹

Introduction: One of the complications feared most after keratoplasty is the development of a corneal ulceration. In extrem cases this complication could lead to the lost of the donor material. This is the reason why qualitative outstanding and vital grafts are used only. Transplants from organ culture are widely used in European hospitals because of good experiences. The corneal-scleral-complexes that are left after keratoplasty can be used for histological and immunohistochemical examinations. Therefore it was possible after occurrence of corneal transplant ulcer to examine the quality of the graft retrospectivily.

Method: 100 corneal-scleral-complexes were examend after different periods of organ culture by light microscopy and immunohistochemistry to estimate their quality. The maintenance of the morphology of the basal epithelial cell layer and the proliferative potential were characterized to find a correlation for the occurrence of corneal transplant ulcer.

Results: Out of 100 examend grafts 93 could be used for transplantation. In 4 cases we diagnosed a corneal transplant ulcer postoperativly. In light microscopy 2 cases showed a complete and regular configurated basal cell layer. In the other two cases only parts of the basal cell layer could be found. On immunohistochemistry the epithelial marker AE 5 showed positive results in all 4 cases, both proliferation markers MIB 1 and PCNA had negative results.

Conclusions: The results show that in spite of a morphologicaly and immunohistochemicaly intact basal cell layer corneal transplant ulcer can`t be ruled out. The used proliferation markers gave no further findings.

Augenklinik der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Rubenowstr. 2, D- 17487 Greifswald¹
Institut für Pathologie der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Loefflerstr. 23e, D- 17487 Greifswald²

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