Abstract:

Dry eye disease is one of the most common complications after refractive surgery, which is highly associated with the postoperative corneal nerve damage. The regeneration of corneal nerve is a slow process. It was showed that even 6 months after surgery, the morphological characteristics of corneal nerve still could not reach the pre-operation level. The damage to the corneal nerve varies among different refractive surgeries. The mechanism of corneal nerve regeneration involve the cytokines secreted by keratocytes, the differentiation of keratocytes, the migration of lymphocytes and macrophages within the limbal vessels, the migration of neutrophils in the central corneal nerve plexus and the secretion of growth factors, etc. Some cytokines, semaphorin and autologus serum take part in this regenerating process. However, research on this topic were mostly animal experiment. Few of them were clinical researches.(Int Rev Ophthalmol, 2019, 43: 405-410)