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Original research
Interactive online survey raises awareness about cornea donation
  1. Dimitrios Tsigkos1,
  2. Anna Tzelepi1,
  3. Dimitra Kopsini1,
  4. Danae Manolakou1,
  5. Evangelos Konistis1,
  6. Sotiria Palioura2
  1. 1National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine, Athens, Greece
  2. 2Cornea Service, Athens Vision Eye Institute, Athens, Greece
  1. Correspondence to Dr Sotiria Palioura; sotiria.palioura{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Objective To assess the impact of a 5 min interactive online survey on raising awareness about cornea donation and willingness to become a donor.

Methods An interactive online questionnaire was used to collect information regarding awareness, perceptions and attitudes towards cornea donation and to educate the participants about the process and value of cornea donation. Willingness to become a cornea donor was assessed at the beginning and the end of the survey.

Results The survey was completed by 1769 Greek residents. Willingness to become a cornea donor increased from 40.5% (n=717) at the beginning of the survey to 55.2% (n=977) by the end of it (p<0.00001). Younger participants, those whose work or studies were unrelated to the medical field, and those with the least knowledge about cornea donation and transplantation were more likely to change their views towards donation by the end of the survey (42.3%, 44.8% and 82.1% increase in willingness to donate, respectively). Major deterrents to donation were lack of information, concerns about the use of the donated corneas and corruption within the medical field.

Conclusion Our 5 min online survey had a significant impact on changing the mentality towards cornea donation in Greece. We live in an online era and incorporation of online tools and applications in awareness campaigns towards cornea and organ donation has become a necessity.

  • cornea
  • eye (tissue) banking
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjophth-2019-000285

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors DT, AT, DK, DM, EK and SP thought about the concept of the online questionnaire, participated in its design and its distribution. DT was responsible for the statistics, which were reviewed by AT and SP. Interpretation of data was made by AT, DT and SP. The manuscript was written by DT and AT and was substantively revised by SP. All authors reviewed the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available upon request.