Abstract:

BACKGROUND: It is necessary to understand the tensile properties of normal and pathological cornea for the research of corneal transplant and artificial cornea replacement and so on. There are some researches about animal corneas and normal human corneal tensile mechanical properties in previous studies, but it is rarely reported that of pathological cornea.
OBJECTIVE: To compare the tensile mechanical properties of normal and pathological corneas.
METHODS: Totally 20 normal and pathological corneas (cornea transplant patients) were performed tensile test on the electronic test machine. Temperature was simulated human body at (36.5± 0.5) ℃, and the load was applied using experimental speed of 5 mm/min. The experimental data were processed with minimum 2 multiplications, and the stress - strain curve was fitted.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The corneal maximum load, maximum stress, maximum strain, and maximum displacement of the normal control group were greater than those of the pathological group (P < 0.05). The findings demonstrated that normal and pathological corneas have different tensile properties. The tensile mechanical properties of pathological cornea have some changes.