By Martin Burns
Corneal degeneration in eyes that have been treated by laser surgery is comparable to that of untreated eyes, a study has found.
Sanjay V Patel and William M Bourne from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, US, used 29 eyes (16 patients) who had received the treatment and 42 eyes (42 subjects) who had not received treatment to conduct the experiment.
The mean annual rate of corneal cell loss nine years after surgery was 0.6 per cent - comparable to that of untreated eyes.
Mr Patel said: "The importance of the findings in our study relates to using corneas that have undergone LASIK or PRK [laser eye surgery] as donor tissue."
Mayo Clinic has a long history of corneal medical research. Mr Bourne helped develop a clinical technique to measure corneal endothelial cells in diseased cornea and transplanted cornea – which is a crucial resource today for understanding cornea function and cornea transplant function.
<< Back to list
