Corneal edema accompanying aphakic extended lens wear

Corneal swelling was monitored for nine hours in 14 unilateral aphakic patients who wore +13.25-diopter extended-wear lenses. After closed-eye wear, the corneal swelling was 6.9% and 11.4% for aphakic and phakic eyes, respectively. To determine if aphakic corneal swelling could be predicted from either corneal epithelial oxygen uptake or hypoxic corneal swelling, we measured epithelial oxygen uptake and corneal swelling from hypoxia. These were 3.67 mm Hg/s and 3.96 mm Hg/s and 8.0% and 12.1% for the aphakic and phakic eyes, respectively. Differences in these measurements between aphakic and phakic eyes were significant, but correlations of oxygen uptake rate and hypoxic swelling response to extended-wear edema were modest. A high intrasubject correlation between the edema accompanying extended-wear was found indicating that postsurgical extended-wear corneal edema may be predicted by measuring presurgical extended-wear corneal edema.