This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Corneal topography differs dramatically before and after epithelial debridement, study shows

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

PARIS — Debriding the corneal epithelium before performing PRK can dramatically change the anterior corneal topography, according to a study presented here at the French Society of Ophthalmology annual meeting.

Damien Gatinel, MD, and colleagues used the Orbscan II (Bausch & Lomb) to measure corneal topography before and after epithelial debridement in 44 eyes of 25 patients scheduled for PRK. "After de-epithelialization, the topography map, which was performed on Bowman's layer, showed increased toricity, negative asphericity and irregularity," Dr. Gatinel said.

The observed effect, which the researchers dubbed EASE (epithelial anterior smoothing effect), may explain the discrepancy between anterior and posterior topographic elevations seen in eyes with early keratoconus, he said.

"It also questions the true interest of topography-guided or wavefront-guided PRK, since the surface that receives the laser ablation is significantly modified in comparison to the surface that was present during the [acquisition of the] wavefront or topography [maps]," Dr. Gatinel noted.