Topography of scleral emissaries and sclera-perforating blood vessels

One hundred persons have been subjected to slit-lamp examination for scleral emissaries. The number registered per subject averaged 12.2. Such were most frequent superiorly at 12 o'clock and inferiorly at 6 o'clock, rarer nasally and the rarest temporally. The courses of the perforating blood vessels were equally often radial (30%), incyclo-directed (28%), and excylodirected (29%), whereas rarely parallel with the limbus corneae (10%), and even more rarely irregularly winding (3%). Episcleral pigmentation in relation to emissaries was most frequently observed superiorly and where the vessels ran radial and limbus-parallel courses, whereas rarely nasally and temporally and at excyclo-directed and winding courses.