Pathologically Reduced Subbasal Nerve Density in Epithelial Basement Membrane Dystrophy Is Unaltered by Phototherapeutic Keratectomy Treatment

Abstract

Subbasal nerve density in EBMD is reduced by 45% and recovers only to the reduced level in the long term after PTK treatment, whereas epithelial wing cell density in EBMD is not affected by PTK in the long term. Fully automated cell analysis from IVCM images could provide an objective, standardized means to quantify and compare corneal cell densities in future studies.