Abstract
Purpose: :
To characterize the topographical roughness of the corneal lamellar bed following manual and microkeratome–assisted posterior lamellar keratoplasty.
Methods: :
Deep lamellar keratoplasty procedures were performed on 8 freshly enucleated porcine corneas. Four corneal beds were dissected by standard manual deep lamellar keratoplasty technique and four corneal beds were dissected by standard microkeratome–assisted technique. To compare the smoothness of the lamellar beds of the two groups, scanning electron microscopy images and high–magnification, optical profilometry roughness parameters measured across multiple 100–µm regions of each bed were obtained. A two–tailed T–test analysis was used to compare the mean roughness parameters Rz and Ra between the two groups.
Results: :
The surface smoothness of the two groups were qualitatively different as measured by SEM. The optical profilometry surface roughness analyses suggest that the manual technique group may result in both larger mean Rz and larger mean Ra parameter values, corresponding to rougher lamellar bed surfaces. Specifically, the manual group mean Rz and mean Ra values were 26.29 ± 4.81 µm and 2.8 ± 1.1 µm versus 19.55 ± 4.30 µm and 1.7 ± 0.48 µm, respectively, for the microkeratome group. The differences between groups were only marginally significant (P=.08) however and may be attributed to the limited sample size.
Conclusions: :
These results suggest that the two techniques may result in different stromal bed roughnesses. Quantitative roughness analysis suggests that the manual lamellar technique is associated on average with slightly rougher surfaces than the microkeratome–assisted technique.
Keywords: cornea: stroma and keratocytes • transplantation • microscopy: electron microscopy