Thiel-Behnke dystrophy

Thiel-Behnke dystrophy is a rare form of corneal dystrophy affecting the layer that supports the corneal epithelium. It was first described in 1967 and was at first suspected to denote the same entity as the earlier-described Reis-Bucklers dystrophy. Following a study in 1995 by Kuchle and colleagues, the two look-alike dystrophies were deemed separate disorders. The history of the condition is therefore partly one of classification, in which a disorder first taken for a variant of a known dystrophy came to be recognized as a distinct disease of the cornea.