Validation of an Experimental Animal Model for Corneal Additive Surgery

Copyright: © 2014 Ibares-Frías L, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Purpose: To assess the hen cornea as a model for training and future wound healing studies after implantation of intrastromal corneal ring segments (ICRS) by clinical and optical outcomes. Setting: University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain. Design: Experimental study. Methods: One 90°, 150-µm thick polymethyl methacrylate Ferrara ICRS segment was manually implanted at 70-80 % depth of 192 Gallus domesticus corneas. Clinical follow-up for 6 months included monitoring corneal thickness, epithelial wound closure, edema, haze, and the location and severity of deposits. The refractive state was also measured. After each animal was euthanized, corneas were processed for direct transmittance and histological analysis. Results: Complications were present in 16 % of the eyes. Epithelial wound closure was completed at 3 ± 2 days. A slight corneal edema in the channel site was present for the first 15 days. All corneas had deposits by 4 months located along the inner, outer curvatures and under the segments. Corneal haze was present only at the incisio