Boston Keratoprosthesis- Associated Infections: Prevention and Therapeutics

Abstract

For the four to eight million persons who are blind from corneal disease worldwide (Smith and Taylor, Refract Corneal Surg 7:436–439, 1999; Global Data on Visual Impairments. 2010 World Health Organization; WHO/NMH/PBD/12.01. Available from URL: http://www.who.int/blindness/GLOBALDATAFINALforweb.pdf; Burton and Mabey, PloS Negl Trop Dis 3:e460, 2009; Gilbert and Muhit, Community Eye Health J 21:46–47, 2008; Silva et al., Acta Ophthalmol Scand 84:396–400, 2006), and who cannot be helped by standard corneal transplantation (Garg et al., Eye 19:1106–1114, 2005), an artificial cornea is an obvious concept (Pellier de Quengsy G. Precis ou cours d’operations sur la chirurgie des yeux. Paris: Didot; 1789.), yet only a small number of devices have been implanted over its history prior to 1990 (Mannis MJ, Dohlman CH. The artificial cornea: a brief history. In: Mannis MJ, Mannis AA, editors. Corneal transplantation: a history in profiles, Hirschberg history of ophthalmology, vol. 6. Oostende: JP Wayenborgh; 1999. p. 321–335; Dohlman et al., Am J Ophthalmol 77:694–700, 1974; Cardona and DeVoe, Trans Am Acad Ophthalmol 83:271–80, 1977; Barnham and Roper-Hall, Br J Ophthalmol 67:468–74, 1983). The reason for this slow progress has been primarily due to the risk of infection (Mannis MJ, Dohlman CH. The artificial cornea: a brief history. In: Mannis MJ, Mannis AA, editors. Corneal transplantation: a history in profiles, Hirschberg history of ophthalmology, vol. 6. Oostende, Belgium: JP Wayenborgh; 1999. p. 321–335; Dohlman et al., Am J Ophthalmol 77:694–700, 1974; Cardona and DeVoe, Trans Am Acad Ophthalmol 83:271–80, 1977; Barnham and Roper-Hall, Br J Ophthalmol 67:468–74, 1983; Dohlman and Doane, Cornea 13:214–8, 1994; Alvarez de Toledo et al., An Inst Barraquer 28:95–100, 1999; Falcinelli et al., Arch Ophthalmol 123:1319–29, 2005).