Search

A fifty-nine-year-old female with corneal ulcer with a history of trauma in the past having clinical presentation of fungal keratitis visited the Ophthalmology outpatient department with a history of redness, watering, pain and white discoloration of the right eye cornea for two months. Sample was cultured on non-nutrient agar medium and revealed Acanthamoeba. Patient was managed with Chlorhexidine eye drop and keratoplasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 has caused a pandemic since the end of the year 2019. Controversy regarding the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 in tears and conjunctival sac has created suspense throughout. Moderate to severe dry eye has been observed in the patients infected with COVID-19. Material and Method: We conducted a descriptive, prospective observational study. We enrolled 16 patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria for our study. Patients affected with acute COVID-19 from 28-9-2020 to 9-10-2020 registered at our hospital and willing to participate were included. Tears and conjunctival swabs were taken at the interval of 24 h; consecutively three samples were taken from one COVID-19 infected patient. In total, 48 samples were analyzed by qRT-PCR. Result: We had 16 participants, 47% were females and 53% were males; 2/16 [12.5%] patients showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in tears and conjunctival swabs. Both the infected patients were females, and they did not have any obvious abnormal ocular conditions. Schirmer strip reading, however, showed a severe dry eye in both the patients. Conclusion: We identified dry eye ranging from mild to moderate to severe [Schirmer 1 reading ranged from 2 to 8 mm] in all our patients admitted to the COVID-19 ward. The SARS-CoV-2 gene seems to be mutating. More work needs to be done to find the viral load in the tears and any abnormalities in the eyes accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Corneal hysteresis (CH) and corneal resistance factor was found to be less for patient wearing toric contact lens as compared to soft spherical CH was calculated as the difference in air pressures between force-in applanation (P1) and force-out applanation (P2), or (P1-P2). Materials and Methods: This was the prospective study, 40 eyes of 22 patients with mean age of 22.09 ± 4.05 years. Eleven eyes were fitted with soft toric contact lens and 29 eyes were fitted with soft spherical contact lens. Dry eye, keratoconic or any systemic pathology were excluded. Soft toric and soft spherical contact lenses (Comfilcon A, Coopervision, and Southampton, UK) were fitted. The Ocular response Analyzer (Reichert Ophthalmic Instruments, Depew, New York, USA) was used to measure CH before and after 3 months using soft toric and soft spherical contact lenses. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic data. Paired t-test was employed for analyzing the difference between the base line value of CH with soft toric and soft spherical contact lens wearers after 3 months. Independent t-test was used to find the association between CH and gender. Results: CH was found to be lesser after 3 months of soft toric contact lens wear, as compared with soft spherical contact lenses. Mean increase of CH was found to range from 10.44 ± 0.96to 10.80 ± 0.96 mmHg (P = 0.000). Conclusion: In this study, there was a decrease in CH after using soft toric contact lenses and increase after using soft spherical contact lenses for 3 months. The increased CH with soft spherical contact lens was reversible in nature. However, CH may differ between lens type and modality of wear which can lead to long-term changes in the corneal biomechanical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]