Mineral Constituents of Sclerosed Human Lenses

It has been well established that the distribution of the different mineral constituents of senile cataractous lenses differs considerably from that of normal lenses and that the changes become more and more marked with advance in the cataract. 1 Comparatively little study of a similar nature has been done with respect to sclerosis. 1e The cataractous lenses in this study therefore were classified, according to a method published earlier, 2 into five stages of sclerosis: i. e., lenses with (1) no sclerosis (0), (2) slight sclerosis (+) (3) pronounced sclerosis (++) (4) very pronounced sclerosis (+++) and (5) highly advanced sclerosis (++++). In all, 72 lenses, extracted by the intracapsular method, were analyzed. The patients from whom the lenses were obtained varied in age from 44 to 87 years, with an average age of 69.1. The five groups of lenses consisted of 7, 10, 11, 25 and 19 lenses, respectively. The weights, on the