Thygeson's superficial punctate keratitis: Ten years' experience☆
Section snippets
Materials and methods
A retrospective chart review was conducted of patients seen on the Cornea Service at Wills Eye Hospital from January 1, 1992, to December 31, 2001, who had been diagnosed with TSPK by 1 of the authors after a complete ophthalmic examination. Forty-one patients were identified. One patient was excluded because of a previous diagnosis of postadenoviral corneal infiltrates, leaving 40 patient records for analysis. Data analyzed included patient gender, age, medical and ocular history, age of onset
Demographics
Of the 40 patients, there were 23 females and 17 males. Mean patient age on initial presentation was 28.7 years, with a range from 5 to 61 years. The age at onset of symptoms or initial diagnosis of TSPK ranged from 2 to 60 years. The oldest patient was a 71-year-old man, observed for active disease with 20 years of multiple recurrences and remissions.
Symptoms
Symptoms included irritation/foreign body sensation/pain in 23 patients (57.5%), photophobia in 20 patients (50.0%), blurred vision in 19
Discussion
Our results demonstrated the wide range of age of onset seen in previous studies (Fig 2). We also confirmed the excellent visual prognosis, with almost 80% of patients demonstrating visual acuities of 20/30 or better during active disease. The remaining patients, with visual acuities between 20/40 and 20/50, all showed improvement in visual acuity with treatment.
Most of our patients were managed with weak topical corticosteroids alone, most commonly fluorometholone 0.1% and loteprednol 0.2%.
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Manuscript no. 220954.
The authors have no proprietary interests in any contents within this article.