DMEK will eventually show superiority in hands of expert surgeons

The Eye Bank Association of America was founded in 1961 with 25 member eye banks. Today, 78 member eye banks harvest approximately 120,000 corneas per year in a high-quality, highly regulated and expensive undertaking. With this network of eye banks and modern transportation capability, along with advanced corneal preservation media that sustain endothelial viability for up to 14 days, corneal transplantation, at least in the U.S., is now an elective procedure. The days of waiting lists and weekend emergency transplants are long gone.Rounding off, approximately 50,000 transplants are performed in the U.S. each year. Eye Bank Association of America member eye banks also export approximately 20,000 corneas for use outside the U.S. every year. While corneal blindness in the U.S. amenable to keratoplasty essentially no longer exists, the story is extremely different in areas of the world where an inadequate eye banking network, unavailability of trained corneal surgeons and economic barriers leave several million people who might respond to a corneal transplant blind and disabled.