Retinal ischemia is the common pathologic process in many ophthalmic diseases, including ischemic optic neuropathy, retinal artery and vein occlusion, carotid artery obstructive disease, retinopathy of prematurity, chronic diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. It is very important to establish animal models to investigate pathology mechanism and explore the treatment of retinal ischemia disease. At present, the commonly used methods for establishing retinal ischemia animal models include increasing intraocular pressure, ligating of blood vessels, suture method, photochemical method, and drug injection etc. This article summarizes the methods to establish the animal models and analyzes the indication for each animal model. It is expected that the method of establishing a retinal ischemic animal model will be helpful to the experimental design of follow-up retinal ischemia studies.
