DR. APURVA NAGTODE

DR.JOSEPHINE CHRISTY

Purpose:

To assess the factors that were crucial in motivating families for eye donation among

successful donors

Telephonic questionnaire was administered to 430 donor families to analyze the motivating

factors.

Results:

Majority of donors were males (55%) and 70% were > 60 years old. Only 13.9% had formally

pledged their eyes before death, though most had expressed their wish to donate (58.8%).

In most cases the family member of the deceased wished for donation (81.9%) and many

(18.8%) belonged to a local volunteering group. Eye donation was practiced as a family

tradition in 18.8% and 5.1% had history of previous corneal transplantation in one of their

relatives. Hospital and collection Centre retrievals had shorter death to enucleation time

than base hospital enucleations (p=0.001). Almost 31.7% deaths occurred in hospitals and

27% contacted a private or government hospital for eye donation after death.

Conclusion:

Local volunteers play a significant role in eye donation awareness.