Donor diabetes severity also did not affect DMEK one-year success
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) is highly effective at one year, regardless of the donor’s diabetes status, according to a study published online Oct. 17 in JAMA Ophthalmology to coincide with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, held from Oct. 18 to 20 in Orlando, Florida.
Francis W. Price Jr., M.D., from Price Vision Group in Indianapolis, and colleagues conducted a double-masked, randomized clinical trial to assess whether the one-year DMEK success rate is affected by the presence of diabetes in the donor. The analysis included 1,097 individuals (1,421 study eyes) receiving donor corneas from 13 eye banks.
The researchers found that the one-year cumulative probability of graft success was 96.3 percent among 912 study eyes (64.2 percent) receiving tissue from donors without diabetes and 97.1 percent among 509 study eyes receiving tissue from donors with diabetes (difference between groups, 0.7 percentage points; P = 0.63). The one-year cumulative probability of graft success was 96.5 percent in the mild donor diabetes severity subgroup and 97.3 percent in the moderate-to-severe donor diabetes severity subgroup. The rate of primary donor failure was 2.5 percent, early failure related to surgical complications was 0.7 percent, and subsequent failure was 0.3 percent in recipients of tissue from a donor without diabetes. The corresponding rates were 2.6 percent, 0.4 percent, and 0 percent, respectively, among recipients of tissue from a donor with diabetes. No failures due to graft rejection were seen.
“Acceptance of these results by the cornea community should expand the pool of donor tissue, which has been shrinking because of new regulations,” the authors write.
Several authors reported financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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