Positive donor rim culture in penetrating keratoplasty.

A 3-year retrospective study on the risk factors of positive donor rim cultures in penetrating keratoplasty was performed. One thousand and ninety-seven consecutive donor rim cultures were reviewed from the period between June 1990 and October 1993 to determine the rate of culture positivity. The sex, age, diabetes status, use of respirator at time of death, cause of death, harvesting technique, storage time, and corneal storage medium utilized for the donors with positive donor rim culture were compared to those for 100 randomly selected culture negative donor controls. Logistic analysis was performed to eliminate confounding effects. Forty-six of the 1,097 (4.19%) donor rim cultures were positive. We found an association between the in situ technique for donor harvesting and culture negativity (p = 0.03). None of the other donor characteristics was associated with culture positivity. None of the 46 recipients who received the positive culture corneas developed endophthalmitis. In situ cornea harvesting promotes less contamination than enucleation and enriched gentamicin and streptomycin storage medium may further decrease donor rim culture positivity.