Abstract
Purpose:
Recent studies involving corneal cross-linking (CXL) have investigated other methods of riboflavin delivery to the cornea such as Iontophoresis, femtosecond laser-created pockets and trans-epithelium CXL. Standard CXL sees riboflavin diffusion to the cornea over a 30 minutes interval. In this study, we investigate a new method of riboflavin delivery to the cornea without removal of the corneal epithelium. The purpose is to gain insight into the temporal dynamics of corneal riboflavin diffusion via surgically-created intra-stromal channels.
Methods:
Porcine globes were obtained from the local slaughterhouse 4 hours post mortem and kept at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius. An incision was made using a cannula needle, followed by insertion of keraring (Mediphacos Ltd) to create a channel in the cornea for riboflavin diffusion. Monitoring of the cornea with a CCD camera facilitates the study of diffusion characteristics in real time.
Results:
The results show that riboflavin can be effectively injected into the cornea via the created diffusion channels without removal of the epithelium layer. The recorded videos show characteristic time-scales on the order of seconds to minutes from which a characteristic diffusion coefficient can be derived on the basis of Fick’s 2nd law of diffusion.
Conclusions:
This study investigated the distribution of riboflavin diffusion in the cornea through creation of surgically-created channels in post-mortem porcine eyes. This could be an effective method for riboflavin application for CXL without the need to remove the epithelial layer and thus with reduced patient discomfort..
Keywords: 482 cornea: epithelium •
479 cornea: clinical science •
480 cornea: basic science