Mr. President, distinguished guests, members of the -Society, ladies and gentlemen:
It is my great honor to be invited to the 35th Congress of Korean Ophthalmological Society and be given an opportunity to address to you. It is also my great pleasure to bring greetings from the members of Japanese Ophthalmological Society.
Today, I have chosen the subject "Patho-physiology of penetrating keratoplasty." As you all know, there have been great technical improvements in this field in the last several years, particularly by introduction of micro-surgical techniques and new suture materials. Remaining problems in keratoplasty are largely biological, particularly concerning the corneal endothelium and immune allograft reactions. Today, I would like to review our recent works1-3 concerning the graft endothelium. Our purpose was to investigate events taking place in the graft endothelium after keratoplasty, thereby gaining knowledge to help conducting surgery and post-operative care. Our studies were comprised of the following three types of investigation : 1. Permeability of the graft endothelium, 2. Follow-up of the graft thickness, -and 3. Morphological studies on the healing of the :graft endothelium using rabbit cornea.
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