Morphological study of corneal edema after anterior segment ischemia

: This experiment was performed to investigate the correlation between morphological changes of the corneal endothelium and clinical corneal edematous opacities after a procedure causing obstruction of bilateral long posterior ciliary arteries of the albino-rabbits. Shortly after the procedure, corneal endothelium became irregular on the anterior-chamber side and there were numerous lysosomal granules in the cytoplasm of corneal endothelial cells. On the third day, endothelial cells became necrotic and collapsed and a part of the cells peeled into the anterior chamber. Fibroblast-like cells and inflammatory cells were piled up in severely damaged areas of the endothelium. On the 11th day, the corneal endothelium developed again as a single layered structure on Descemet's membrane. It's seemed that corneal edema was induced as a result of severe damage corneal endothelium exposed to biochemical mediators such as prostaglandins released into the aqueous humor because the severity of corneal edema indicated some relation to changes in the concentration of prostaglandins in aqueous humor after anterior segmental ischemia.