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Overview: Initial antimicrobial therapy for microbial keratitis

¹ Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria 3065, Australia

Keywords: microbial keratitis; antibiotics

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Empirical antibacterial therapy in keratitis is based on the likely pathogen, the available drugs, and the severity of the condition.¹ Ongoing treatment is modified by clinical response and the result of initial microbial investigations.²

There is a large degree of variation in organism type and their resistance patterns from centre to centre, and so local contemporaneous data are essential to make a rational choice of initial antibiotic therapy. Reference centres specialising in corneal disease with good microbiological backup have a key role in analysing local trends and disseminating their results. Ongoing audit is also required, as patterns of resistance are invariably changing.³

Overall, there are some common pathogens that cause acute bacterial keratitis. Streptococcal species, staphylococcal species, pseudomonas and enterobacteriaceae make up the four most common classes of infective agents and any empirical therapy has to cover all these groups.

STREPTOCOCCAL SPECIES
There have been some concerns about the lack of . . . [Full text of this article]

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