CORNEA
1. | A 24-year-old contact lens wearer comes in with a two-day history of eye pain. |
Figure 1.1
Q | 1.1 What else do you want to know about in the history? |
ā¢Blurring of vision
ā¢Contact lens history
ā¢Contact with soil or contaminated water
ā¢Immunosuppression: diabetes, human immunodeficiency virus, steroids, chemotherapy onset
ā¢Progression
ā¢Previous treatment
ā¢Pain
ā¢Trauma
Q | 1.2 What are the signs? |
ā¢Conjunctiva: injected
ā¢Corneal ulcer/infiltrate involving the visual axis
ā¢Central epithelial defect
ā¢Hypopyon
Q | 1.3 What are your differential diagnoses? |
ā¢Contact lens-related infective keratitis
ā¢Exposure infective keratitis/neurotrophic infective keratitis
Q | 1.4 How do you manage the above patient? |
ā¢Admit the patient
ā¢Perform a corneal scrape and send for microscopy and cultures
ā¢Intensive topical antibiotic treatment: gentamicin 14 mg/ml hourly, cephazolin 50 mg/ml hourly through the night
ā¢Systemic antibiotic treatment if the infiltrate is near the limbus (oral ciprofloxacin 500 mg twice a day for a week)
Q | 1.5 What do you send the corneal scrapings for? |
ā¢Gram stain
ā¢Blood agar
ā¢Chocolate agar
ā¢Thioglycate
ā¢Brain heart infusion broth (BHIB)
ā¢Sabouraud dextrose
ā¢Others
ā¬Suspicious for fungal infection: giemsa stain, methenamine silver stain
Q | 1.6 What are the complications of a corneal ulcer? |
ā¢Acute: thinning of the cornea resulting in corneal perforation leading to endophthalmitis
ā¢Long-term: scar, astigmatism, blindness