How Donation Works • Fact or Fiction • Anatomy of the Eye • FAQs

The Illinois Eye-Bank encourages everyone to consider eye, organ and tissue donation, and to make an informed decision regarding their personal wishes. Whatever your decision, we urge you to share your decision with your family.

If you decide that you would like to become an eye, organ and tissue donor, your first step is to sign up on the Illinois Organ/Tissue Donor Registry. By signing up on the Donor Registry, you give first-person consent to donate your eyes, organs and tissues, instead of leaving the decision to relatives.

When someone passes away, Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network, the Federally-designated organ procurement agency, collaborates with the hospital or other facility involved in caring for the deceased person. When Gift of Hope is notified of a death, staff members check the Illinois Organ/Tissue Donor Registry to determine whether the individual had registered as an eye, organ and tissue donor. If the name appears on the Donor Registry, Gift of Hope contacts the Illinois Eye-Bank (IEB) or the Illinois Eye-Bank, Watson Gailey (IEBWG) to handle the possible cornea donation.

Before any organs or tissues can be recovered, the individual’s family is notified and a medical history is gathered. Donation eligibility is based on your medical records and interviews with family members. The questions in the interviews are similar to the kinds of questions asked before you donate blood. Additionally, a blood sample is obtained and tested for communicable diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis.

Although joining the Donor Registry guarantees that a person’s wishes will be carried out after his or her death, the Eye-Bank still works with family members in an attempt to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the decision.

Once the medical history and blood tests determine that a person is eligible to be a donor, specially-trained eye tissue recovery technicians are dispatched to recover the tissue. Technicians are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ready to travel to hospitals or other facilities to recover donated eye tissue.

Eye tissue must be recovered and preserved within a few hours of a patient’s death. Healthcare professionals caring for the donor’s body help the process by keeping the donor’s eyes irrigated and prepared for recovery. When the Eye-Bank technician arrives, he or she confirms the consent for donation and determines the type of procedure to perform. A corneal excision, the most common procedure, uses a tiny scissors to gently separate only the cornea from the donor’s eye. This is the procedure used when the Eye-Bank anticipates that the cornea may be suitable for transplantation.

An eye enucleation is the removal of the donor’s entire eye, also known as the globe. This procedure is generally performed when transplantation of the donor’s cornea is not a possibility, but the globe can be used for specialized research or training purposes.

Whichever procedure is performed, there will be no visible signs following the donation, and families may make funeral arrangements – including viewings – as desired.

After eye tissue is recovered, the technician carefully places it in a special container, where it is submerged in a chemical preservation solution to keep it healthy during transport, storage and laboratory evaluation. If stored properly and refrigerated, corneas can be preserved for as long as 14 days after their recovery, though most are usually used much quicker.

Corneas recovered by IEB and IEBWG technicians are brought back to the Eye-Bank’s laboratories in Chicago or Bloomington for evaluation, storage and distribution. At the lab, every cornea, globe and piece of scleral tissue receives its own special identification, which is used to keep track of the tissue through the entire donation and transplantation process. Tissues used in research and training or those that cannot be used are also tracked in compliance with Federal and eye banking regulations.

Eye banks are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most, including the IEB and IEBWG, are accredited by the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA). Our laboratories operate in full compliance with these regulations, and receive periodic inspections from both organizations.

Nearly all IEB and IEBWG technicians are certified by the EBAA. They receive their Certified Eye Bank Technician (CEBT) accreditation after completing rigorous training and testing. In the lab, they are responsible for a variety of tasks, including packaging tissue for safe transport, screening potential donors, performing advanced data entry and evaluating corneas intended for transplantation.

After donated corneas arrive in the lab, they are carefully unpacked, evaluated and rated on a scale that helps transplant surgeons assess the condition of the tissue. Evaluation requires the use of a slit lamp, which can detect imperfections in the donor cornea that may cause vision problems after transplantation, and a specular microscope, which is used for cell counting. We are born with a finite number of corneal cells that diminish as we age. Therefore, corneas recovered from older donors tend to have fewer cells than corneas from younger donors. Surgeons often prefer to use corneas from younger donors when treating younger patients because there is a greater possibility that the cornea will remain clear and healthy throughout the patient’s life.

When corneal surgeons working in hospitals and surgery centers need eye tissue for transplantation, they contact the Eye-Bank’s Tissue Distribution Coordinators, who arrange the distribution of eye tissue.

Corneas are distributed on either a routine or an emergency basis. Certain types of eye injuries necessitate emergency cornea transplants and, in those cases, our staff works with a network of couriers to rush the tissue safely to where it is needed.