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    Cloquet’s Canal

    By David L. Greenburg, MD, MPH, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.
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    Cloquets Canal

    A 52-year-old retired military officer was scheduled for removal of a moderately dense posterior subcapsular cataract. A month before, a very dense posterior subcapsular cataract had been removed uneventfully from his fellow eye; that procedure was his only ocular history.

    At the time of our surgery, a thin, translucent tubular reflection was noted in the vitreous just posterior to the lens capsule. Highlighted against the red reflex of the operating microscope, the structure was observed to pass posteromedially toward the optic nerve. Its anterior aspect was decentered slightly inferonasally to the posterior pole of the lens capsule. The patient’s cataract extraction progressed uneventfully. At the postoperative dilated examination, the structure was still visible posterior to the lens capsule in the vitreous. No abnormalities were noted at the optic nerve head.

    During embryologic development, the hyaloidal vasculature passes through Cloquet’s canal to perfuse the embryonic lens before regressing during the second trimester. We believe the observed structure represents Cloquet’s canal.

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    Multimedia Extra


    The video above takes another look at Cloquet’s canal.