title: Patterns of pathologic response in the cornea.
abstract: The cornea, like most tissues, manifests only a limited number of responses to the wide variety of diseases and insults that assault it. To facilitate a systematic understanding of these responses, we have divided the cornea into four zones: the epithelium; the epithelial basement membrane, Bowman's layer and anterior stroma; the stroma; and the endothelium and Descemet's membrane. We describe six pathologic processes or responses in each zone: defects; fibrosis and vascularization; edema and cysts; inflammation and immune response; deposits; and proliferation. We illustrate this paradigm with a chart that contains examples of each pathologic process in each zone.
mesh_terms: D001485:Basement Membrane / Q000473:pathology; D003315:Cornea / Q000473:pathology; D003316:Corneal Diseases / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology*; D003560:Cysts / Q000473:pathology; D003886:Descemet Membrane / Q000473:pathology; D004487:Edema / Q000473:pathology; D004727:Endothelium / Q000473:pathology; D004848:Epithelium / Q000473:pathology; D005355:Fibrosis; D006801:Humans; D007634:Keratitis / Q000473:pathology