Macrophage infiltration in the human retina.

The retinal tissues were examined by light microscopy and by scanning and transmission electron microscopy in a human eye in which there was extensive infiltration by macrophages. The stimulus to macrophagic infiltration was an immune response in a mixed sympathetic and lens-induced ophthalmitis which occurred after surgical treatment for glaucoma. The inflammatory infiltrate was so exuberant that the cells were considered to be predominantly exogenous and the sites of entry into the eye included the pars plana, the optic disc, and the retinal and choroidal blood vessels. Within the retina it appeared that the macrophages migrated via the nerve fibre layer and via the subretinal and subpigment epithelial spaces.