BACKGROUND Skin allograft is the gold standard of wound coverage in patients with extensive burns; however, it is considered as a temporary wound coverage and rejection of the skin allograft is considered inevitable. In our study, skin allograft as a permanent coverage in deep burns is evaluated. METHODS Skin allograft survival was assessed in 38 patients from March 2009 to March 2014, retro...

BACKGROUND/AIM Amniotic membrane (AM) transplantation effectively expands the remaining limbal epithelial stem cells in patients with partial limbal stem cell deficiency. The authors investigated whether this action could be produced ex vivo. METHODS The outgrowth rate on AM was compared among explants derived from human limbus, peripheral cornea, and central cornea. For outgrowth of human li...

PURPOSE To describe the clinical presentation and management of late (>3.0 years) acute graft rejection in keratolimbal allograft (KLAL) recipients. METHODS This was a multicenter, retrospective observational case series. Six eyes of 6 patients with ocular surface transplant at a mean age of 36.2 years were seen at 3 tertiary referral centers for acute graft rejection between 2007 and 2013. M...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of prolonged limbal explants cultured without any scaffolds or on amniotic membrane (AM) on the viability, proliferation and differentiation potential of putative phenotypically defined cultured limbal mesenchymal (LMSC) and epithelial stem cells (LESC). METHODS Limbal explants were cultivated on cryopreserved intact AM or plastic plates using medium supplemente...

PURPOSE To determine the expression and function of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in human conjunctival, limbal and corneal epithelial cells. METHODS Expression of TLRs was examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, and western blot analysis in human conjunctival, corneal and limbal epithelial cells and tissues. Ligand-stimulated nuclear factor kappaB activation; inte...

Anterior segment stem cell technology, due to its already well-defined corneal limbal stem cells with greater ease of evaluation, has been at the forefront of ophthalmic stem cell treatment and technology since 1997. This paper provides an overview of the current standard of care for treatment of limbal stem-cell deficient conditions and reviews recent treatment technologies using ex vivo expan...

The human cornea requires a smooth, transparent, robust and renewable surface to maintain its key optical and protective functions. The corneal epithelium is maintained by a local population of “stem cells”, which although not truly pluripotent, are capable of self-regeneration by asymmetric division. These cells are located at the limbus the region where the conjunctiva-covered sclera meets th...

PURPOSE In the epidermis, the highest clonogenicity, a feature of stem cells (SCs), is found in the smallest keratinocyte. In the limbal-corneal (LC) epithelium the SCs are exclusively localized in the basal epithelial layer of the limbal domain. The current study was conducted to determine whether this spatial SC arrangement is reflected in differences in the cell size between limbal and corne...

PURPOSE To evaluate the long-term outcome of HLA-matched lr-CLAL for bilateral ocular surface disorders. METHODS A retrospective, non-comparative interventional case series study of 39 eyes of 32 patients with bilateral surface disorders and clinical diagnosis of limbal stem cell deficiency who underwent HLA-matched lr-CLAL. Visual acuity (VA), ambulatory vision (> or = 20/200) and ocular sur...

background  to report normal variations of the limbal structures using in vivo laser scanning confocal microscopy. methods: this was a retrospective study of fourteen eyes from 11 healthy individuals. confocal imaging of cornea and limbus was performed using heidelberg retina tomograph iii rostock corneal module. results: the typical structure of the palisades of vogt (pov) was detected in 57% ...