Purpose: Among all grafts, corneal transplantation is the most commonly performed. Graft outcome is usually good, but some cases failure due to rejection can be observed.There are some well-known risk factors for corneal graft rejection. The purpose of this study is to analyze cases of corneal graft rejection in our Service focusing on peculiar risk factors. Methods: We analyzed 113 cases of penetrating keratoplas-ties performed in 1998. Cases of corneal graft rejection were evaluated in relation to preoperative diagnosis, existence of synechia, corneal vascularization, increased intraocular pressure, previous graft rejection, donor age, time of enu-cleation and preservation of the donor cornea and the surgeon's surgical experience. Results: We were able to identify 20 (17.69%) cases of graft rejection. Among these 9 had synechia, 4 corneal neovas-cularization, 8 increased intraocular pressure and 7 pre-vious graft rejection. Conclusions: Our results are in agreement with those of the literature. It seems that the surgeon's experience plays a role in corneal graft rejection. It is important to call attention to the fact that reference services handle difficult and more complicated cases which may be at a higher risk to rejection.
Corneal transplantation; Rejection; Eye ban-king; Ocular surgery
