The Effect of Viscosity of PDMS Based Silicone-Oil Tamponade Agents on the Movement Relative to the Eye Wall during Eye Movements

Silicone oil tamponade is used as vitreous substitute to treat complicated retinal diseases. It provides support to the retina and acts against contraction of the retina and as such plays a vital role in preventing eyes from certain blindness. Silicone oil however has a tendency to emulsify and is accountable to inflammation and glaucoma. In in-vitro study, it was found that using silicone-oil with higher viscosity reduce the occurrences of emulsifications. In this study, an eye model chamber was used to capture the movement of silicone oil bubbles inside the model eye chamber by rapid serial photography. A few tamponades derived from the same material but with different shear viscosities were used. Our objective of this experiment is to investigate the effect of viscosity of tamponade to the movement of tamponade relative to retinal phase in model eye chambers mimicking saccadic eye movements. Our experiment confirms that shear viscosity determines the relative movement between the silicone bubble and the chamber wall. The higher the viscosity, the smaller the movement of tamponade relative to the chamber wall. We suggested that using much viscous tamponade may reduce the onset of emulsification due to the reduction of relative movement.