Cornea & External Disease

The cornea – the clear-tissue window in the front of your eye – helps you focus by bending the light entering your eye and warns you of potential harm with its thousands of nerve endings.

The cornea can become scarred, cloudy, and distorted from infections, injuries, and hereditary diseases. A damaged cornea causes the light entering the eye to focus poorly and can lead to blurry vision, double vision, and even blindness. Because of all of its nerve endings, an injured or diseased cornea can be very painful.

We offer expertise in corneal transplantation, including high-risk keratoplasty and keratoplasty in association with iris and lens abnormalities, as well as diagnosis and management of corneal ulcers, scleritis, ocular allergy, complex surface disease, and pemphigoid.

Special services include:

• excimer laser vision correction (LASIK, PRK, and PTK)
• computerized video corneal topography
• anterior segment photography and angiography
• endothelial specular microscopy
• microbiology evaluations
• confocal microscopy
• immunopathology and histopathology of conjunctival and corneal disease including pemphigoid and tumors

Corneal Transplants

The cornea is the clear part at the front of the eye, covering the pupil and iris. The cornea helps to focus light, and a clear, healthy cornea is essential for good vision. If the cornea is damaged or becomes swollen or scarred, it may lose its clarity or smoothness, scattering or distorting the light and leading to blurred vision.

Ophthalmologists perform over 40,000 cornea transplants – sometimes called keratoplasty – each year in the US – it is the most common and most successful type of surgery done today.

Looking through a microscope, the ophthalmologist measures the eye for transplant, carefully removes the injured cornea, and sews the new donor cornea into place.

Transplant surgery would not be possible without the hundreds of thousands of generous donors and their families who have donated corneal tissue to enable others to see.

Cornea Specialists

• Michael H. Goldstein, MD, MM
• Pedram Hamrah, MD
• Kamden R. Kopani, MD
• Melina Morkin, MD
• Michael B. Raizman, MD
• Lana M. Rifkin, MD
• Helen K. Wu, MD