Lamellar Keratoplasty

Lamellar corneal surgery was conceived in the first years of the 20th century. Despite the intuition of decreasing the possibility of allograft rejection, this technique was given up on account of bad visual results, if compared with penetrating keratoplasty, due to inadequate techniques and instruments. In the eighties, the development of refractive surgery techniques, causes a new attention in this kind of surgery and the ideation of deep lamellar keratoplasty (DLK). In the last few years a new lamellar technique, Deep Lamellar Endothelial Kerato-plasty, was developed in order to correct endothelial diseases such as bullous keratopathy. In this article we will describe some of the most important anterior and posterior lamellar techniques.