Needless to say, the essence of keratoplasty is the maintenance of the-vitality and clarity of the graft. About 60 years ago, Dr. Elschnig performed the first successful and well-documented partial iso- and allografts of human cornea with von Hippel´s original trephine.
In Korea, the first successful corneal graft was performed 40 years ago by Drs. Hayano and Sadake, Japanese ophthalmologists in Seoul. They used an 8mm trephine and fixed the graft by the overlapping method in which a square thin rubber piece was fixed to the subconjunctival tissues by direct suture at its four corners.
After the World War II, the keratoplasty was not very popular in Korea untill about 1960, for various reasons, including the Korean war, lack of available donor corneas and above all, well-trained corneal surgeons. Only scattered cases of keratoplasty were reported by a few Korean ophthalmologists with some successful results.
The recent advances in keratoplasty in Korea has been greatly stimulated by the lectures and practice courses on keratoplasty which were conducted by Drs. David Paton and Miguel Martinez, expert corneal surgeons of Johns Hopkins Hospital, U.S.A., and by the donation to the Eye Bank of St. Mary´s Hospital of a set of instrument and basic equipment from Dr. J. H. King, Jr. in Washington, D.C. in 1967.
Although a few eye banks were launched in Korea in the sixties, their activities have been greatly restricted on account of the peculiar custom of the Korean people´s reluctance to donate their eyes after death.
In Korea, 231 cases of keratoplasty have been performed until 1975, which means that only about twenty patients per year undergo corneal grafts althogh many more registered patients are waiting for operation.
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