SUMMARY
Charts of patients who had undergone penetrating keratoplasty at Hospital da Santa Casa de São Paulo, from January 1991 to December 1995 were retrospectively reviewed, regarding the leading indications. There were 249 keratoplasties in this 5-year in terval.
The average age of patients was 42. 6 years (range 1 to 89 years). Nineteen corneal transplants (7. 6%) were performed in children ≤ 12 years old.
The cases were distributed among 1 6 diagnostic categories, according to Lindquist.
The most common indication was keratoconus accounting for 21.7% of cases, contrasting with other studies which have found pseudo-phakik bullous keratopathy to be the leading indication with gradual decrease of keratoconus. On the other h a n d, pseudo-phakik bullous keratopathy was the fifth most common indication accounting for only 5% of the cases.
Regraft was the second most frequent indication . Trauma and ulcerative conditions with or without infection that are com m only associated to corneal inflammation and vascularization were more prevalent among the regrafts.
Infeccious and post infeccious keratitis were the third indication, followed by trauma. Among corneal dystrophies, Fuchs was the most frequent (3.6%). Other dystrophies constituted a small, but important group of disorders (6.4%o), mainly macular dystrophy. Fifteen cases (6%) were viral keratitis, 9 for herpes (simplex and zoster).