ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC AWARENESS OF POSTMORTEM DONATION AND CORNEAL TRANSPLANTATION

Aim. The study of public opinion, analysis of population's attitude towards a number of issues concerning both transplantation in general and corneal transplantation in particular for development of the optimal tactics of approach to still unresolved issues in this area. Materials and Methods. Specially designed questionnaire has been used for the survey, consisting of 14 questions, that allows to evaluate opinion of the population on a number of issues related to transplantation, postmortem donation, monetary compensations, etc. The study population was 384 people. Results. Most respondents were aware of keratoplasty. Approximately every seventh respondent (15.4%) of the survey had relatives or close acquaintances with a corneal pathology. Most of the respondents have a positive attitude both to the living and postmortem donation. At the same time, almost all the respondents know about the existence of waiting lists for organ transplantations and also support the opinion about the need for informational popularization of postmortem donation. As to the issue of commercialization of donation, no unified point of view was reached, the opinions differ practically equally. The prevailing number of respondents consider the existence of informed consent to be obligatory, but a part of respondents think that in some cases the surgery can be made without it. Conclusion. Nowadays, despite a significant progress in the field of transplantology, there still remains a number of issues requiring detailed and comprehensive examination. They are related to the legislative regulation, informational popularization, monetary compensation, as well as the waiting lists for the transplantation.