Aetiology of Infectious Conjunctivitis- A Prospective Study.

Corresponding Author:
Dr. Liby Joseph,
Associate Professor,
Department of Ophthalmology,
Government Medical College,
Kottayam, Kerala, India.
E-mail: libydoctor@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND

Conjunctivitis is inflammation of the conjunctiva and is the most common cause of red eye. It may be due to infective causes or due to non-infective causes. The infective causes include those caused by bacteria and viruses. It may affect one or both eyes. Patients usually complain of redness, swelling and discharge from the eye. The type of discharge usually suggests the aetiology. It may be watery in viral conjunctivitis while purulent or muco-purulent in bacterial conjunctivitis. In this study, we have tried to confirm whether the clinical suspicion of a bacterial cause is actually bacterial by confirming with culture studies and to analyse which bacteria are commonly responsible for the infection.

METHODS

A prospective Study of 100 consecutive cases of conjunctivitis cases attending the Ophthalmology Outpatient Department were clinically evaluated and the conjunctival discharge was sent for bacterial culture. The results were correlated clinically and analysed using SPSS 16.0 version.

RESULTS

The study identified bacteria as the etiological agents in 20% of cases, of which 19% were coagulase negative Staphylococci and 1% was Staphylococcus aureus. The rest of the 80% cases might include both viral and of unknown aetiology.

CONCLUSIONS

Majority of the patients clinically suspected to have bacterial conjunctivitis were confirmed to have a bacterial cause. This shows that a high index of clinical suspicion helps in giving correct treatment to the patients and they are spared from spending unnecessarily on culture studies. Thus, decreasing the economic burden of treating a common eye disease.

KEY WORDS

Conjunctivitis, Culture and Sensitivity, Conjunctival Discharge