Scleral plaques. I. Incidence and morphology.

Abstract

A scleral plaque is a transparent, superficial, well‐defined scleral area covering a normal, white, scleral layer. The subjacent uvea and the superjacent conjunctiva are normal. The plaque is situated in front of an eye muscle attachment.An investigation comprising 1,086 subjects showed a scleral plaque to be a very frequent phenomenon in elderly persons (3% aged 60, 10% aged 70 and 25% aged 80 or more).Plaques are vertically oval (65%) or circular (27%). Other shapes are rare. They average 2.72 times 1.47 mm in size (the largest one found measured 12.0 times 6.0 mm). Mean distance from the limbus corneae, 3.26 mm. The plaque increases in size and the distance consequently decreases with increasing age. Plaques are usually situated mesially (68%) and less frequently laterally (19%) or in front of any of the four horizontal muscular attachments (13%). In the series under review no plaques were found on the vertical muscles.A possible relationship between plaques and arcus senilis, cataract, corneal thickness, sex incidence and symptomatology is discussed.