Abstract
Purpose :
To report the clinical course and long term prognosis of vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC).
Methods :
We analyzed 85 eyes of 48 patients (42 males and 6 females: average age 9.79±3.51 years) with VKC in the eye center of Fukuoka University Hospital.
All eyes were followed for more than 5 years from April 2005. We retrospectively analysed the treatment and the recurrence of VKC based on medical records.
Results :
Seventy-six eyes (89.4%) were treated with anti-allergic eye drops, sixty-three eyes (74.1%) were treated with corticosteroids eye drops, Eighty-two eyes (96.5%) were treated with topical immunosuppressive drugs, and 7 eyes (8.2%) were treated with oral corticosteroids. Subcutaneous eyelid injection of triamcinolone acetonide was given in 36 eyes (42.4%) during the course. After initial treatment, Thirty-three eyes (38.8%) showed improvement and no recurrence of VKC was observed after that. We analyzed 52 (61.2%) recurrence eyes, and 42.3% were improved in 2 years of treatment and 69.2% in 5 years, respectively ten eyes (19.2%) showed recurrent remission and exacerbation. Fifty-eight eyes (77.3%) were improved by 16 years old and they didn’t have regression after that.
Conclusions :
VKC could be treated earlier by using the topical immunosuppressive drugs. It was shown that cases with recurrence could be cured in the pre adolescence.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.