Effect of pretreating porous webs on stromal fibroplasia in vivo.

We have previously demonstrated that keratocytes penetrate and deposit collagen after a porous web is inserted into interlamellar corneal pockets. In these studies our goal was to determine whether pretreatment of the porous discs would enhance wound healing. We have evaluated four methods of pretreating the porous disc prior to its placement in the stroma. The pretreated discs were followed in vivo for a period of 42 days. The criteria we used to determine whether pretreatment affected wound healing were: collagen deposition, extent of fibroplasia, the synthetic rate of keratocytes within the disc, and lack of edema. Our results indicate that preseeding with stromal keratocytes enhanced the overall synthetic rate and specifically enhanced the amount of collage deposited within the web.