Corneas shipped to Taiwan

Press, 25 July 1989, Page 38

Corneas shipped to Taiwan

NZPA-AP Cincinnati A Taiwanese doctor hopes to reduce the wait for cornea transplants in his homeland by shipping in extra corneas. Corneas that are too old to be used for transplants in the United States can be used in Taiwan, which gave Dr Wen-Loong Huang the idea for the shipments. “When I came here last August, I received many eyeballs for research from the Cincinnati Eye Bank,” said Dr Huang, a visiting professor of ophthalmology at the University of Cincinnati Medical Centre.

“So I think, why don’t

we use these corneas?”

In Taiwan, the wait for a cornea transplant can be as long as six months to two years.

The first two U.S. corneas recently arrived in Dr Huang’s hometown, Kaohsiung, and were transplanted into two people within days. It is the start of what Dr Huang and Ms Peggy Worden, the executive director of the Cincinnati Eye Bank, expect to be a long-term project. “We gave 700 eyes to research last year,” she said.

“They would have been good enough for transplant in the United States

if it wasn’t for their age.” U.S. guidelines for cornea transplant do not permit use of corneas from people older than 70 because there are enough younger ones available.

The Taiwanese are desperate for donor corneas and will accept the older ones. The corneas sent to Taiwan for transplant meet all other U.S. medical criteria, Ms Worden said.

"Age is not a problem for us,” Dr Huang said. ‘We’ve used a 92-year-old’s cornea.”

Taiwanese eye surgeons do not perform many transplants because donors are scarce, he said.