In vivo corneal oxygen uptake during soft-contact-lens wear

We develop a new method to compute in situ corneal oxygen uptake during soft-contact-lens (SCL) wear using a micro-polarographic Clark electrode.

After steady SCL wear and subsequent removal, a membrane-covered polarographic microelectrode is immediately placed onto the cornea. The resulting polarographic signal is related to the steady-state corneal oxygen uptake rate during soft-contact-lens wear. We devise a new analysis to quantify oxygen uptake into the cornea during lens wear. The proposed procedure is applied to new polarographic data for 10 human subjects with 12 different commercial lenses during open eye. We compare our results with recent theory.

Average corneal oxygen uptake rates at open eye during SCL wear for 10 subjects wearing 12 different commercial lenses vary from 2 to 10 μL(STP)/cm(2)/h. High oxygen permeability lenses have uptake rates of -10 μL(STP)/cm(2)/h, in close agreement with our previously obtained no-lens human uptake rates of 9 to 13 μL(STP)/cm(2)/h at open eye.(40) Application of the classical data-interpretation procedure to our experimental data gives corneal-uptake results that are approximately three to five times smaller than those obtained with our new interpretation scheme.

We provide a simple and reliable tool to quantify corneal-oxygen-uptake rates during in vivo soft-contact-lens wear. Comparison of our newly measured in vivo oxygen uptakes to model prediction for SCLs of varying oxygen transmissibility is in good agreement with available theory.