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TUESDAY, Feb. 12 (HealthDay News) -- People who donate corneas are giving the gift of sight, but they may also be passing along a serious infection to the recipients, a new study finds.
This infection, called endophthalmitis, most commonly comes from donors who die in a hospital or had cancer, according to the report in the February issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology. Endophthalmitis is a rare but serious complication of corneal transplant surgery and can result in loss of vision or blindness in the affected eye.
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"A national study over a decade showed that serious infection with endophthalmitis, after corneal transplant surgery, is uncommonly reported, but can be caused by a range of microbes, including bacteria and fungi," said study co-author Dr. Kirk R. Wilhelmus, a professor of ophthalmology at Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston. "The chance for infection is higher if eye tissue donations came from decedent donors who died in the hospital or with advanced cancer," he added.
For the study, the researchers used data from a registry that collected information on cases of eye infection after transplants done between 1994 and 2003. Over the 10 years, eye banks distributed 340,174 corneas in the United States and 109,009 in other countries. There were a total of 162 cases of endophthalmitis reported during that time.
The odds that someone was infected by a donor who had been hospitalized were three times greater when compared with a recipient who was not infected. Moreover, getting an infection was substantially more likely if the donor had died from cancer, the researchers found.
Although infections are rare, they do occur, and may be due to infections picked up in the hospital. "Donor tissue can harbor microorganisms that can persist despite antiseptics, sterile procedures, and antibiotics," Wilhelmus said.
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