A review of Bowman's layer structure, function, and transplantation

Bowman's layer is an acellular corneal structure, which is considered to be a specially modified anterior stroma. It is presumed, that it forms as a result of ongoing epithelial-stromal interactions and no clear physiological purpose has been proven. Despite this fact, Bowman's layer has found its place in corneal transplantation. It has been performed for over a decade, mainly in treatment of advanced keratoconus with multiple modifications. Transplantation of Bowman's layer can be expected to become a widely used surgical procedure in the treatment of many corneal pathologies involving fragmentation and destruction of Bowman's layer. This article aims to summarize information available on its structure, possible function, and transplantation. A thorough literature search was performed in the PubMed database and Google Scholar using keywords: Bowman's layer, structure, function, preparation and corneal transplantation. All the relevant sources were used, which represent 77 peer-reviewed articles with information corcerning the topic of this article.