Abstract
Purpose :
Considering that tears play the role as a lubricant, it is speculated that in the pathophysiology of dry eye, the increased friction during blinking may result in corneal and conjunctival damage, which may in turn affect the blink itself. We previously reported that conjunctival epithelial damage is significantly related to tear abnormalities and blinks in dry eye patients. The purpose of this present study was to investigate the factors determining central corneal epithelial damage (cCED) in dry eye cases.
Methods :
This study involved 56 eyes of 56 female dry-eye patients (mean age: 57.8 years). In all eyes, tear meniscus radius (TMR, mm), spread grade (SG) of the tear-film lipid layer (SG 1-5: 1 being the best), fluorescein breakup time (FBUT, seconds), central corneal epithelial damage (cCED: 3 points maximum), and the Schirmer 1 test (ST1, mm) were evaluated. Blink rate (BR, per minute), palpebral aperture height (PAH, mm), upper-eyelid opening/closing-phase amplitude (UOA/UCA, mm), upper-eyelid opening/closing-phase duration (UOD/UCD, msec), and upper-eyelid opening/closing-phase maximum velocity (UOMV/UCMV, mm/sec) were measured by use of a custom-made high-speed blink analyzer. Finally, the factors that determine cCED was investigated by multiple regression analysis in which the parameters were chosen using the stepwise procedure.
Results :
The cCED was significantly related to TMR, SG, FBUT and ST1 (R= -0.48, 0.71, -0.27 and -0.40, respectively, all p <0.05) and was not significantly related to all blink-related parameters. In multiple regression analysis, the cCED was described as: 0.257 + (0.510 x SG) – (0.195 x PAH) + (0.007 x UCMV) (R2=0.54, p <.0001).
Conclusions :
The findings of this study revealed that aqueous-tear-volume-related SG and blink-related PAH and UCMV were significantly related to cCED.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.