Sclera

The tough white outer coat over the eyeball that covers approximately the posterior five-sixths of its surface. The sclera is continuous in the front of the eye with the cornea and in the back of the eye with the external sheath of the optic nerve. The word "sclera" is from the Greek "skleros" = hard. The plural is sclerae.

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A portion of the fibrous layer forming the outer envelope of the eyeball, except for its anterior sixth, which is the cornea. SYN: sclerotic coat, sclerotica, tunica albuginea oculi, tunica sclerotica. [Mod. L. fr. G. skleros, hard]

- blue s. appearance of the uveal tissue through a thin s. seen in a number of conditions including myopia, buphthalmos, scleral staphyloma, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Marfan syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, Paget disease, and Pierre Robin syndrome.

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sclera 'skler-ə n the dense fibrous opaque white outer coat enclosing the eyeball except the part covered by the cornea called also sclerotic, sclerotic coat

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n.

the white fibrous outer layer of the eyeball. At the front of the eye it becomes the cornea. See eye.

• scleral adj.

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scle·ra (sklērґə) gen. and pl. scleґrae [L., from Gr. skleros hard] [TA] the tough white outer coat of the eyeball, covering approximately the posterior five-sixths of its surface, and continuous anteriorly with the cornea and posteriorly with the external sheath of the optic nerve. scleral adj

Sclera.