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Abstract
The relationship between the rate of flow of the aqueous humor and the intraocular pressure in living and dead human eyes has been studied by two manometric techniques. The first comprised a record of the pressure decay curve and a separate determination of the pressurevolume relationship for the same eye. The pressure-flow relationship was then calculated from the rate of pressure change and the corresponding volume decrement. The second, experimental approach has been to determine the relationship between the intraocular pressure and. the rate of flow of aqueous humor in conditions of steady state. Studies have been made on 7 eyes before and immediately after enucleation, on 7 cadaver eyes in situ, and on 10 enucleated eyes. In dead eyes, the rate of outflow was found to be directly proportional to the intraocular pressure. In living eyes, analysis of the pressure decay curve indicated, that the relation-ship between pressure and flow was approximately linear over the observed pressure ranges but that at pressures approaching the normal steady state, the relationship xoas consistent with the suppression of aqueous humor formation by small increases in pressure. The results of steady-state perfusion studies on living eyes were in agreement with this conclusion.