Supply of corneal tissue in the United Kingdom.

Supply of corneal tissue in the United Kingdom Within the last seven years in the UK there have been significant changes in the supply of corneal tissue for transplantation. Most ophthalmic surgeons here previously relied on local donors as their only source of tissue for corneal grafts. This meant that the grafts often had to be performed as emergency operations, and that excess tissue was wasted because of limited storage times and the lack of a simple routine mechanism for transferring the tissue to other hospitals. The likelihood of tissue matching for patients at high risk of immunological rejection was also severely limited. Some hospitals, notably Moorfields Eye Hospital in London and the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, were able to schedule grafts by ensuring an adequate supply of tissue through well organised donor retrieval programmes and through the establishment of eye banks, but they were very much in the minority. The eye banks at East Grinstead and Moorfields were set up in 1959 and 1965, respectively.