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Purpose: Corneal transplantation is the treatment of choice for many corneal diseases. At present, there is a global shortage of corneal transplant tissues, and failure to obtain consent from families of potential donors is a major limiting factor in tissue procurement., Methods: All family members of potential donors after cardiac death approached by the local eye bank staff members from January 2008 to December 2014 in Hong Kong were included. Reasons for consent or refusal and sociodemographic details of the deceased and the family members approached were reviewed. Trends in consent rates from 2008 to 2014 were examined. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to examine determinants of donation among cases from 2013 to 2014., Results: A total of 1740 cases were identified. The overall consent rate was 36.8%, and the consent rate did not change significantly over the 7-year study period (P = 0.24). The most common reason for consent by family members was "the wish to help others" (86.0%), and the most common reason for refusal was "traditional Chinese culture to keep the body intact after death" (42.7%). From the multivariable analysis in the subset of cases from 2013 to 2014 (n = 628), family members were more likely to consent when the deceased was female (adjusted odds ratio 1.45, P = 0.03), with a do-not-resuscitate order (adjusted odds ratio 2.27, P < 0.001)., Conclusions: The consent rate for eye donation did not change significantly from 2008 to 2014. Our findings suggest that health education and promotion campaigns need to address cultural barriers to organ donation.

One hundred nine Korean American community subjects were interviewed regarding their experiences with hwa-byung (HB), a Korean folk illness label commonly used by Koreans with a myriad of physiological and psychological complaints. During these interviews, standard instruments were also used to assess their depressive and somatic symptoms. The results indicated that a relatively high proportion (12%) of the subjects labeled themselves as having suffered from HB. While no apparent sociodemographic differences were found between HB and non-HB subjects, significantly more HB subjects fulfilled the diagnosis of DSM-III major depression and also had previous diagnoses of depression. The HB subjects also had significantly higher scores for the total, depressive, and somatic subscales and 16 of the 20 individual items of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale. These data confirm previous observations of substantial overlap between HB and DSM-III major depression among Koreans and Korean Americans, and suggest that HB may be a culturally patterned way of expression for Koreans experiencing major depression and related conditions. The clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are also discussed.