Eye infections in contact lens wearers

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted on 1500 patients wearing different types of contact lenses, 1170 of them were wearing soft lenses [873 daily wear and 297 extended wear]; 284 wearing hard contact lenses and 46 wearing gas permeable lenses. 40 patients were diagnosed as eye infections in different forma. These 40 patients were subjected to thorough clinical ophthalmic examination. Microbiologic examination included swabs taken from the conjunctiva; corneal; swabs from contact lens; contact lens cases and solutions if available and swabs from some discarded lens. All the specimens were cultured onto 5% sheep blood agar, chocolate agar and sabouraud's dextrose agar plates. 32 patients with infections were using extended wear soft contact lenses and 8 patients were using daily wear soft contact lenses. Lesions detected were corneal ulcers in 25 patients; conjunctivitis in 7 patients; conjunctivitis with corneal infiltration in 8 patients. Microbiologic examination revealed that the pseudomonas species was the most common organism isolated in patients; lenses; lens cases and solutions and discarded lenses. Candia albicans was isolated from 2.5% of patients and 10% of discarded lenses