Comparative clinical assessment of corneal sensation with a new aesthesiometer.

A new version of an aesthesiometer offers particular advantages such as portability without risk of damage to the filament, easy filament replacement, and an expanded stimulus range. We compared the performance of this new instrument to that of the Cochet-Bonnet aesthesiometer in a clinical setting on herpetic patients. Using both instruments, we obtained paired measurements on the normal and diseased corneas from five test loci placed over the corneal surface. Statistical analysis of the normalized data showed that the data obtained by the new instrument were similar to those of the Cochet-Bonnet aesthesiometer.