scleromalacia

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noun

Degenerative thinning of the sclera.

Scrabble 19

Meanings

nounscleromalacia (usually uncountable, plural scleromalacias)

plural scleromalacias

  1. uncountableusuallymedicineDegenerative thinning of the sclera.

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

    2009, Venki Sundaram, Training in Ophthalmology
    2 more examples

    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.

    1913, Ophthalmoscope: A Monthly Review of Current Ophthalmology, volume 11, page 381

    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.

    2015, Brad Bowling, Kanski's Clinical Ophthalmology: A Systematic Approach, page 267
  2. uncountableusuallymedicineA very rare ophthalmic manifestation seen in rheumatoid arthritis.

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

scleromalacia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scleromalacia

MLA

“scleromalacia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scleromalacia. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scleromalacia,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scleromalacia.

Source: scleromalacia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.