A Surgical Cryoprobe for Targeted Transcorneal Freezing and Endothelial Cell Removal

Figure 2

Representative images of corneal endothelial freeze injury on the pig eyes ex vivo induced by 3 sec freeze with four different cryoprobe tips and assessed by trypan blue staining. The thickness of each cornea is indicated on each panel (±SD) based on eight pachymetry readings. The area of cell damage is seen via the blue stain, and successful and non/less successful freeze injuries are shown in the left and right columns, respectively. Freezing with the 1.8 mm diameter/flat profile probe only rarely resulted in a reproducible wound (a and b). Endothelial freeze injury was more reliably achieved with 2.4 mm diameter probe tips with flat or concave profiles (c–f), but the optimal result and best consistency was achieved using the 3.4 mm diameter/concave profile cryoprobe (g and h). Scale bar, 3 mm. See Table 1 also.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)