Ulcerative keratitis associated with contact lens wear

Abstract

To review the microbiological profile of ulcerative keratitis associated with contact lens (CL)-wear, 35 patients with culture-proven CL-associated microbial keratitis were studied between September 1999 and September 2002. Corneal scrapes and CL-care products were collected and were subjected to microbiological evaluation. Gram-negative bacilli alone were recovered from the corneal scrapes of all 35 (100%) patients, all 70 (100%) CL storage case wells and also from CL-care solution of six (17.14%) of the 35 patients. There was a significantly higher number of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (71.43%) isolated from eyes with CL-related keratitis than other bacterial isolates (28.57%) ( P < 0.001). Microbial contamination of CL storage cases was a great risk for gram-negative bacterial infection among soft CL-wearers.

Keywords

• Contact lens-associated keratitis
• incidence
• microbial etiology
• microbial contamination of contact lens-care system
• <i> P. aeruginosa</i> .