Method for the Preservation and Sterilization of Fresh Donor Material for Full-Thickness Keratoplasty by Framycetin

THE pioneer of corneal graft preservation was formalin and produced "dead" grafts; later he used haemolysed serum cooled to +5C. He recorded a successful human lamellar corneal graft where the donor material had been so preserved for eight days. Schimanowski (1912; 1913) performed a successful keratoplasty from an enucleated eye preserved for ten days at low temperature. About twenty years later Filatov (1931; 1935; 1947) carried on this work. Initially, he preserved donor eyes in serum or citrated donor blood at low temperature for up to six days, but later he preferred the absence of preserving fluid at 2-40C. which he asserted improved the viability of the graft.