Frequency and Location of Punctate Opacities in Three Hundred Young Crystalline Lenses

The frequency of opacities in the young crystalline lens is so great that it has been considered physiologic by some ophthalmologists. Pellaton,1examining 82 children in Basel, Switzerland, found punctiform opacities in 96 per cent of them. Vogt2wrote that in a somewhat older group peripheral hooklike opacities were present in 10 per cent, embryonal axial opacities in the region of the anterior embryonal sutures in 20 per cent and various forms of punctate opacities in the region of the posterior Y sutures in 10 per cent. He stated that the number of punctate opacities increases with age and in the fifth and sixth decade hardly a lens is free of such opacities. This statement recalls the famous dictum of Walther3that every one who does not die prematurely becomes cataractous. The purpose of the investigation herein reported was to determine the incidence of opacities in Americans