The practical details of cataract extraction / by H. Herbert.

  • Herbert, H.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The practical details of cataract extraction / by H. Herbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    109/142 (page 87)
    organized deposit on the lens capsule, as a shrunken opaque band connected with the edge of the pupil. The less ready absorption of this haemorrhage, occurring when the reaction to operation has fully developed, may be due to admixture with inflammatory lymph. I once saw it happen from sudden pressure by spasm of the eyelids, while the eye was being dressed, a few days after operation. Rarely this haemorrhage from injury may be large enough to extend into the vitreous, where it may interfere with vision for some time after complete absorption has taken place from the anterior chamber. DELAYED UNION of the wound has been very rare at the Cowasjee Jehangir Hospital since a conjunctival flap has been invariably made. Formerly it was not at all rare for the anterior chamber to refill only after periods of several days up to two weeks (considerably longer delays having been recorded). Ordinarily the lips of the wound are glued together within a few hours sufficiently to retain aqueous; and often, even at the operation there is no tendency for the anterior chamber to empty itself completely of the fluid used in irrigation. In the process of healing of a corneal wound, the surface epithelium dips down often as far as one-fifth of the total thickness of the cornea.' In very rare cases it may grow down even into the anterior chamber.! Between the two limits there may be many cases with sufficient epithelial ingrowth to oppose a barrier to the proper cicatrization of the wound, and to maintain per- sistent leakage through it. But the exact causes of the failure of the early stages of union, which permits of this epithelial downgrowth, are often a matter of con- * Hocquard, Annales d'Oculistiqne, cxxvi. 342. f Meller, v. Graefe’s Archiv, lii. 3, epitomized in Ophthalmic Review of November, 1901.