Introduction:

therapeutic keratoplasty is defined as a procedure whose purpose is to help eradicate or reduce the infection when maximum medical therapy is not efficacious to achieve this end.

Objective:

to evaluate the evolution and results of the patients operated on therapeutic keratoplasty.

Materials and methods:

a cross-sectional, descriptive study was carried out in a universe of 15 patients with a diagnosis of severe corneal ulcer. The patients underwent therapeutic keratoplasty surgeries in the Cornea Service of the Clinical Surgical University Hospital Comandante Faustino Perez Hernandez, in the province of Matanzas, between April 2017 and May 2020, and gave their informed consent to participate in the research.

Results:

male gender predominated, with 53.3% and a mean age of 58.8 years. As predisposing factors, trauma antecedent predominated in 33.3%, followed by the use of contact lenses and diabetes mellitus as associated systemic disease. Ulcers of mycotic etiology predominated in 26.6% of the cases; corneal perforation and descemetoceles occurred in 40% and 26.6% of the cases respectively. During the first month, the most frequent postsurgery complications were recidival sepsis and graft necrosis. On the other hand, corneal opacity and vascularization were the most frequent sequels.

Conclusions:

the delay in initiating the adequated protocol treatment causes severe symptoms of the disease that lead to “in hot” keratoplasty in perforated or necrosed corneas, causing postsurgery complications and non-encouraging sequels for patients.

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