Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Corneal Confocal Microscopy: A Novel Non-invasive Technique to Quantify Small Fibre Pathology in Peripheral Neuropathies
Published on: January 3, 2011
Corneal confocal microscopy for assessment of diabetic peripheral neuropathy: a meta-analysis
Min-Shan Jiang1, Ying Yuan2, Zhao-Xiang Gu3
1Shanghai Key Lab of Modern Optical Systems, Engineering Research Center of Optical Instruments and Systems, Ministry of Education, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA.
Purpose:
To evaluate the diagnostic performance of corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) in assessing corneal nerve parameters in patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN).
Methods:
Studies in the literature that focused on CCM and DPN were retrieved by searching PubMed, Excerpt Medica Database (EMBASE) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases. RevMan V.5.3 software was used for the meta-analysis. The results are presented as weighted mean difference (WMD) with a corresponding 95% CI.
Results:
13 studies with a total of 1680 participants were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled results showed that the corneal nerve fibre density, nerve branch density and nerve fibre length were significantly reduced (all p<0.00001) in the patients with DPN compared with healthy controls ((WMD=-18.07, 95% CI -21.93 to -14.20), (WMD=-25.35, 95% CI -30.96 to -19.74) and (WMD=-6.37, 95% CI -7.44 to -5.30)) and compared with the diabetic patients without DPN ((WMD=-8.83, 95% CI -11.49 to -6.17), (WMD=-13.54, 95% CI -20.41 to -6.66) and (WMD=-4.19, 95% CI -5.35 to -3.04)), respectively. No significant difference was found in the corneal nerve fibre tortuosity coefficient between diabetic patients with DPN and healthy controls (p=0.80) or diabetic patients without DPN (p=0.61).
Conclusions:
This meta-analysis suggested that CCM may be valuable for detecting and assessing early nerve damage in DPN patients.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Diabetic Retinopathy
Diabetic Neuropathy
Diabetic Foot Ulcer
Diabetic Nephropathy
Peripheral Arterial Disease II: Clinical Manifestations and Diagnostic Evaluation
Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy

