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Topical use of nerve growth factor speeds healing of surgical corneal wounds
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Topical administration of nerve growth factor effectively accelerates surgical corneal wound healing, according to one study.
Mauro Cellini, MD, and colleagues in Bologna, Italy, randomized 30 patients into two groups after undergoing cataract surgery. In the first group, patients received one drop of nerve growth factor (NGF) solution in the conjunctival fornix every 2 hours for 2 weeks, then four times daily for an additional week. Patients in the second group received one drop of hyaluronic acid 0.2% in the conjunctival fornix on the same dosing schedule. Optical coherence tomography was used to evaluate the corneal thickness at the side of the surgical wound, the endothelial cell count and the incision line in the stroma at 1, 7 and 21 days postop.
At day 1 postop, none of the parameters were statistically different between the two groups. By day 21, the endothelial cell counts were not statistically different between the two groups, but the mean corneal thickness in the NGF factor group was 645.2 µm compared with the mean corneal thickness in the non-NGF factor group was 704.2 µm (P < 0.002)
Complete wound healing and non-visible stromal incision by day 21 was noted in the NGF group.
This study was published in Ophthalmic Research.