Rinsing therapy

In any type of ocular bum and later on rinsing therapy, we have found that the speed of the penetration was roughly correlated to the concentration of the corrosive and the type of corrosive. This question is still scientifically open but estimations of penetration of sodium hydroxide are from about 5-8 pm/s depth propagation into the tissues, derived from measurements of Rihawi et al. on rabbit corneas [43]. Theoretical work on penetration characteristics of different chemicals have been published by Pospisil and Holzhuetter [44]. They have proved that, in first order estimation, the chemical properties like molecular size and shape, partition coefficients, and the type of interaction with the intrinsic membrane parameters determine the penetration characteristics. In very good estimations, they have shown that, for a various set of test substances, the penetration is almost exactly predicted by their modelization. 

The untreated eye bums result in a severe and high water uptake. With rinsing therapy, this does not really change to a large extent after 16 days. The lower hydration in the phosphate group is due to the calcification and loss of stromal ground substance that is able to swell. 

---