Soft Contact Lens Complications Practice Test

When regression fails to occur after the critical period, the vessels that formed during neovascularization don’t completely disappear; they leave behind ghost vessels. These are non-perfused, linear remnants—essentially empty sleeves of former vessels—that appear as pale, thread-like lines rather than a branching, active network. The key idea is that the vascular pattern becomes a nonfunctional trace of what once grew, not new branching or occlusion. This fits because the other possibilities imply active growth or blockage: branching vessels at the limbal arcades would indicate new angiogenesis; vascular occlusion would mean blocked flow within vessels; epithelial edema is a surface epithelial issue, not a vascular pattern. Ghost vessels precisely capture the scenario of incomplete regression, leaving behind nonperfunded, nonbranching vessel remnants.