Hospital Cornea Retrieval Programme in a startup eye bank – A retrospective analysis and lessons learned

PURPOSE: This study aimed to share our experience in the hospital cornea retrieval program as a new eye bank. METHODS: This was a retrospective study conducted in a tertiary care institute from August 26, 2019 to March 22, 2020. The medical and eye bank records were analyzed for hospital mortality, mortuary records, and donors approached. The corneal collection was divided between Voluntary (received from voluntary calls), HCRP (cornea received from hospital deaths), and Medico-Legal Cases (received from MLC deaths in hospital) to see the trend of donation and utilization over time. RESULTS: During the study period, 154 corneas (77 pairs) were collected. The HCRP provided a major source of corneas 58.4% (90 corneas) as compared to voluntary 19.5% (30 corneas) and MLC 22.1%(34 corneas). There were younger tissues in MLC than HCRP donors, and older tissues in Voluntary donors, and the difference was statistically significant. There was no significant difference in the quality of optical grade tissues and the utilization of corneas for transplants between the three groups. Post hoc analysis showed more non-optical tissues in the voluntary donations (P = 0.004), maximum donors with medical contraindications in the HCRP group (P = 0.001), and time-lapse in corneal retrieval in MLC cases (P = 0.0001). Of these 154 corneas, 78 (50.6%) were assessed as suitable for transplantation, of which 59 (75.6%) tissues were optical grade tissues. The overall utilization was 39.6%. CONCLUSION: HCRP is indeed challenging for a new eye bank, but proper understanding and implementing strategies may help for good utilization of tissues.