Abstract
Purpose :
To report the microbiologic profile and clinical risk factors of pediatric corneal infiltrates over a 12 year period at The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Methods :
The microbiology and medical records of all patients age 16 or younger who were clinically diagnosed with an infectious keratitis between August 2002 and August 2014 at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary were reviewed. Data collected included age, infectious etiology, presenting and final visual acuity, risk factors, and treatment. Visual acuity was converted to LogMAR, and Fisher’s exact test was used to determine statistical significance.
Results :
One hundred eleven unique infections in 96 patients aged 3 months to 16 years (mean age 12 years) were identified. Of these infections, the 77 (from 31 males and 33 females) that had positive cultures were used in analysis. Gram negative organisms comprised a majority of the infections. The principal risk factor for infectious keratitis was contact lens (CL) wear (41/64, 64.1%) followed by pre-existing ocular disease (10/64, 16%). Notably, gram positive organisms were more common in the non-CL wear group (13/32, 41%) and gram negative organisms were more common in the CL group (23/45, 52%), p < 0.0001. The contact lens group had better visual outcomes compared to the non-contact lens group (p = 0.04) and adjuvant topical steroid use did not significantly alter visual outcome.
Conclusions :
Infectious keratitis in the pediatric population is relatively uncommon, however, like the adult population, the primary risk factor is contact lens use. The majority of patients had single organism bacterial infections, with gram negative organisms predominating in the contact lens group and gram positive organisms predominating in the non-contact lens group.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.