Sleep apnea and cornea transplants

For any cornea transplant, there has to be an individual who is the donor. In the April 2025 edition of the journal Cornea, Abhishek Ramini and colleagues published a study related to donors diagnosed with sleep apnea.

They found that donors who had sleep apnea provided corneas that had a lower cell count than those without sleep apnea. The authors hypothesized that this might be related to inflammation caused by intermittent lack of oxygen that occurs in sleep apnea. While the cell count was affected, we don’t know if that actually affects the outcomes of cornea transplantation.