Trends in corneal transplantation from 2001 to 2016 in Brazil

A retrospective and analytical study was conducted by using data from the National Transplantation System on 184,575 corneal transplantations performed between January 2001 and December 2016 in order to analyze the trends in corneal transplantation from 2001 to 2016 in Brazil. The Cochran-Armitage test, analysis of variance, and Duncan's multiple comparisons were used to verify the existence of trends, compare the mean values between regions, and verify the mean differences, respectively. A significance level of 5% was used for all tests. The analysis showed that there was a 2.4-fold increase in the number of corneal transplantations (from 6,193 [35.2 per million people (pmp)] to 14,641 [71 pmp]; p<0.001), a 50.7% increase in the efficacy of meeting the population's demand for corneal transplantation (from 35.3% to 53.2%; p<0.001), an 11-fold increase in the number of corneal transplantation centers (from 32 to 356), and a 2.5-fold increase in the number of corneal transplantation teams (from 276 to 688) in Brazil during the period studied. The waiting list for corneal transplantation decreased by 45.4% (from 23,549 [123 pmp] to 12,865 [62.4 pmp]; p<0.001), and the corneal transplantation teams performed about 19 corneal transplantations per year. The best indices were observed in the southern, midwestern, and southeastern regions, and the worst indices were in the northern and northeastern regions. Brazil has been improving its capacity to perform corneal transplantation in the past 16 years, although this improvement varies across regions. However, the population's demand for corneal transplantation is yet to be satisfactorily met, primarily due to the low number of corneal donations.