Corneal Wound Healing

Introduction Traditional histopathologic techniques have left unanswered several questions about cellular events in corneal wound healing. One of these questions concerns the origin of fibroblasts at the wound edges.1Earlier investigators have been impressed by the sudden appearance of large numbers of these fibroblasts at the edges of corneal wounds, apparently out of proportion to the mitotic activity of the stromal cells.2Two suggestions have been made proposing an origin of the fibroblasts from cell types other than proliferating stromal cells: first, that they arise by transformation from corneal epithelial cells which rapidly plug the wound defect3; second, that they are in fact transformed monocytes which arrive at the wound edges by a movement through corneal stroma from perilimbal blood vessels.1,2,4With regard to the second possibility we have previously noted the difficulty with which cells move through the dense collagen network of the normal cornea.