Fungal keratitis

Abstract

As Jones has emphasized, the successful management of microbial keratitis, fungal or otherwise, necessitates five steps: (1) clinical suspicion and clinical diagnosis; (2) performing the proper laboratory procedures; (3) initiating antimicrobial therapy based on the results of laboratory studies; (4) modifying the initial therapy based on the clinical response; and (5) deciding correctly when and how to terminate therapy. Keratomycosis poses special diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for ophthalmologists because of its low incidence, and its resistance to treatment, because of the lack of antifungal agents with good penetration into the eye, and because of the difficulties in obtaining meaningful in vitro drug susceptibility results for fungal isolates. We believe, however, that ophthalmologists are now diagnosing keratomycosis earlier and treating it more effectively.