The purpose of this paper is to compare the culture results of donor corneas in penetrating keratoplasty operations with or without vancomycine application and to evaluate the efficacy of vancomycine.
The study was performed on Haseki Eye Bank origined corneas as a prospective, randomised, double blind and multicentered study. 94 donor corneas of 47 bodies were included. The corneal tissues taken from the corpses were carried to the tissue supply center in Optisol-GS solution (gentamycine, streptomycine). In tissue supply center the corneas taken from the same body were divided into two groups and sent to two different surgeons. While 1mg/ml vancomycine was applied to the corneas in the first group for 5 minutes, nothing was done to the corneas in the second group. All corneal rims were carried to the microbiology lab in sterile tubes.
Postoperative endophthalmitis was observed in none of the 94 eyes which the corneas were transplanted with or without vancomycine application. While the culture results in 2 (4,3%) of the 47 donor rim tissues which vancomycine was applied were positive, 6 (12,7%) of the 47 donor rim tissues without vancomycine application were positive. No statistically significance was observed between the two groups. On the side in two donor corneas taken from the same body the same bactery type was positive.
Althought no significant difference was observed in this study, we believe that, as the literature supports, with the increase in the number of the cultured corneas statistically significant results will be reached.

Penetrating keratoplasty Donor corneal rim Endophthalmitis Vancomycine