Health Guide©

CORNEAL OPACIFICATION

A perfectly smooth and transparent cornea is essential to good vision. The cornea is normally invisible except for reflections from its surface. "Corneal opacity" is a lack of corneal transparency caused by inflammation, ulceration or injury. Corneal opacities reduce vision when they encroach on the pupil. Dense opacities are quite disfiguring.

The cornea is the outer covering of the eye and is also a lens. The same things happen to it tat happen to the lens of the eye, although usually later, and often less seriously. The process of the cornea becoming opaque (corneal opacification) can result in blindness.

Prevention:

There is no direct way to prevent corneal opacification. Fortunately, this is less common than cataracts of the lens. As with the cataracts, you need to be alert for changes in vision, and you need to call these to the attention of the health professional. Corneal transplants and special types of contact lenses are very effective in countering this problem. The usual mistake is to wait too long for correction, thus decreasing the quality of life in the period before diagnosis and treatment.

If only a superficial corneal opacity is present, vision may improve by surgically removing the opaque corneal layers, i.e., superficial keratectomy. If the opacity entire occludes the area of the cornea covering the pupil but there are other clear corneal areas, an optical iridectomy (excision of part of the iris) may be done to create an artificial pupil. The new opening (coloboma) is made opposite a clear part of cornea. When the entire cornea is opaque and vision is greatly reduced, a corneal transplantation, i.e.,keratoplasty, may be performed.