scleromalacia

English

Etymology

sclero- +‎ malacia

Noun

scleromalacia (usually uncountable, plural scleromalacias)

1. (medicine) Degenerative thinning of the sclera.
   • 1913, Ophthalmoscope: A Monthly Review of Current Ophthalmology, volume 11, page 381:

     Myopia has many pages devoted to it. The author regards as the primary cause of this disease an abnormal extensibility and stretching of the sclera, that there is a sort of scleromalacia, analagous to osteomalacia, which develops in some persons during the period of their growth, recovers spontaneously in many cases, leaves behind an elongation of the axis of the eye, but lasts for decades in the malignant cases, and occurs sometimes in one eye alone.

   • 2009, Venki Sundaram, Training in Ophthalmology:

     Severe scleritis additionally involves fibrinoid necrosis with consequent tissue loss seen clinically as scleral thinning (scleromalacia).

   • 2015, Brad Bowling, Kanski's Clinical Ophthalmology: A Systematic Approach‎^[1], page 267:

     Senile scleromalacia refers to a spontaneously occurring irregular, oval or kidney-shaped partial-thickness scleral defect found at the same location, typically with one or more scleral hyaline plaques at the opposite location in the same eye or in the fellow eye; separation of a scleral hyaline plaque to leave an area of scleromalacia has been described.

2. (medicine) A very rare ophthalmic manifestation seen in rheumatoid arthritis.

Derived terms

• scleromalacia perforans