Abstract
Specular microscopy can provide a non-invasive morphological analysis of the cornea endothelial cell layer. A variety of analysis programs are available to determine corneal endothelial quality. The flex-center endothelial analysis method (Konan Inc) is a newer technique including the outermost digitized cells and thus increases the number of cells for analysis. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the new flex-center method, increases the possibilities of corneal endothelium evaluation before implants. For this purpose 67 corneas were studied by both methods at the Eye Bank of the Tissue Establishment of Córdoba. Although we have found differences in the resulting of number of cells in the area analysed, no significant differences were found with respect to the endothelial cell count, coefficient of variation cell area, and the percentage of hexagonal cells recorded. Based on this data, both methods can be used satisfactorily in eye banking.
References
Abib FC, Holzchuh R, Schaefer A, Schaefer T, Godois R (2012) The endotelial simple size analysis in corneal specular microscopy clinical examinations. Cornea 31:546–550
Baddon A, Jones M, Armitage J, Warwick R, Kaye S (2010) A review of allograft ophtalmic tissue in eye surgery. Cell Tissue Bank 11:29–38
Benetz BA, Diaconu E, Bowlin SJ, Oak SS, Laing RA, Lass JH (1999) Comparison of corneal endotelial image analysis by Konan SP8000 noncontact and Bio-Optics Bambi system. Cornea 18:67–72
Benetz BA, Gal RL, Ruedy KJ, Rice C, Beck RW, Kalajian AD et al (2006) Specular microscopy ancillary study methods for donor endothelial cell density determination of cornea donor study images. Curr Eye Res 31:319–327
Bland JM, Altman DG (1986) Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement. Lancet 1:307–310
Cornea Donor Study Group (2005) An evaluation of image quality and accuracy of eye bank measurement of donor cornea endothelial cell density in the specular microscopy ancillary study. Ophthalmology 112:431–440
de Sanctis U, Machetta F, Razzano L, Dalmasso P, Grignolo FM (2006) Corneal endothelium evaluation with 2 noncontact specular microscopes and their semiautomated methods of analysis. Cornea 25:501–506
Elisabeth P, Hilde B, Ilse C (2008) Eye bank issues II. Preservation techniques: warm versus cold storage. Int Ophthalmol 28:155–163
Garsd A, Ford GE, Warring GO III, Rosenblatt LS (1983) Sample size for estimating the quantiles of endothelial cell-area distribution. Biometrics 39:385–394
Gaum L, Reynolds I, Jones MN, Clarkson AJ, Gillan HL, Kaye SB (2012) Tissue and corneal donation and transplantation in the UK. Br J Anaesth 108(S1):i43–i47
Hirst LW, Auer C, Abbey H, Cohn J, Kues H (1984) Quantitative analysis of wide-field endothelial specular photomicrographs. Am J Ophthalmol 97:488–495
Hirst LW, Yamauchi K, Enger C, Vogelpohl W, Whittington V (1989) Quantitative analysis of wide field specular microscopy II. Precision of sampling from central corneal endothelim. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 30:1972–1979
Kirk AH, Hassard DTR (1969) Supravital staining of the corneal endothelium and evidence for membrane on its surface. Can J Ophthalmol 4:405–415
Laing RA, Sandstrom MM, Berrospi AR, Leibowitz HM (1976) Changes in the corneal endothelium as a function of age. Exp Eye Res 22:587–594
Ohno K, Nelson LR, McLaren JW, Hodge DO, Bourne WM (1999) Comparison of recording systems and analysis methods in specular microscopy. Cornea 18:416–423
Parekh M, Salvalaio G, Ruzza A, Camposampiero D, Griffoni C, Zampini A, Ponzin D, Ferrari S (2013) Posterior lamellar graft preparation: a prospective review from an eye bank on current and future aspects. J Ophtalmol 2013:769869
Patel SV, McLaren JW, Bachman LA, Bourne WM (2010) Comparison of flex-center, center, and corner methods of corneal endotelial cell analysis. Cornea 29:1042–1047
Schimmelpfenning BH (1984) Direct and indirect determination of nonuniform cell density distribution in human corneal endothelium. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 25:223–229
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Villalba, R., Jiménez, A., Fornés, G. et al. Flex center method versus center method for endothelial corneal evaluation in eye banking. A comparative analysis. Cell Tissue Bank 15, 507–512 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10561-014-9434-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10561-014-9434-0