Purpose:
Define data from normal corneas studying the behavior of corneal endothelial cell area, coefficient of variation and side number of endothelial cells.
Methods:
This retrospective study comprised 863 corneal specular microscopy examinations from a brazilian private clinic, neither regardening race, sex and without history of pathologies that would alter the endothelium. BioOptics LSM contact specular microscope with Bambi 2500 software (BioOptics®, Portland) and Cells Analyzer - Corneal Endothelial Statistical Lab (Technicall®, Brazil) were used to calculate the endothelial sample data: 95% of reliability degree and the relative error was smaller than 0.05. Calculated data: Endothelial cell area (ECA), coefficient of variation (CV) and side number of endothelial cells: Percentage of cells with less than 6 sides (%<HEX), hexagonal cell percentage (%HEX) and percentage of cells with more than 6 sides (%>HEX). The endothelial data were grouped by decades according to the age of the patients. The results were described by average and standard deviation.
Results:
Growing model was demonstrated for ECA, CV, %<HEX , %>HEX; decreasing model was demonstrated for %HEX. The age and endothelial data are shown at the table.
Conclusions:
Knowing the representative values of ECA, CV, %<HEX , %HEX and %>HEX can help to determinate endothelial diagnosis for research, clinical and surgical situations. It can also be useful in following eyes with disease wich affects the endothelium and to prepare and evaluate corneal specular microscopy reports.
Keywords: cornea: endothelium • imaging/image analysis: clinical • cornea: clinical science