Intracorneal Silicone Fluid

Introduction A variety of different plastic materials have been used as experimental intracorneal lenses or membranes.6-11Resultant clouding and vascularization of the cornea or degeneration of stromal tissue have been disappointing. It was thought that fluid silicone might be better tolerated and less impair nutritional exchange. The possibility was entertained that by injecting silicone fluid between the layers of corneal stroma the change in corneal curvature might be sufficient to correct a major portion of the refractive error in aphakia. We were also interested in determining if a thin intracorneal layer of the silicone might serve as a barrier to the passage of fluid through the cornea from the anterior chamber in the presence of an injured or diseased endothelium. Materials and Methods The liquid silicone used in this study was one of the Dow Corning "200 fluids" having 1,000 centistoke viscosity and a refractive index of 1.4035. The