Correlation Among Upper and Lower Tear Menici, Noninvaive Tear Break-up Time, and the chirmer Tet Original Reearch Article

Purpoe To determine the relationhip among tear menicu parameter, noninvaive tear break-up time (NITBUT), and the chirmer tet. Deign Experimental tudy. Method Thirty-ix ubject were teted on one randomly elected eye. Real-time corneal optical coherence tomography (OCT) wa ued to image the upper and lower tear menici during normal and delayed blinking followed by meaurement of NITBUT and the chirmer tet. Digital image of the eye were taken for meauring the lid length to etimate tear volume in the menici. Reult Compared with normal blinking, ignificant increae of tear menici occurred during delayed blinking (pot hoc, P < .01). NITBUT wa weakly but ignificantly correlated with the height (r = 0.36; P = .03) and area (r = 0.37; P = .03) of the lower tear menicu during normal blink. NITBUT wa alo correlated with the lower tear menicu volume (r = 0.45; P < .05) and total tear menicu volume (r = 0.43; P < .05) during normal blinking. The chirmer tet wa not ignificantly related to any parameter of the tear menici, volume, or NITBUT; however, it wa negatively correlated with the age of the ubject (r = −0.47; P = .004). The age wa negatively correlated with the upper tear menicu (r ranged from 0.36 to 0.37 for the radiu, height, and area, P < .05) meaured during delayed blinking. Concluion NITBUT appear correlated with the lower tear menicu during normal blinking, and the chirmer tet appear not correlated with the noninvaively meaured tear menicu.