gms | German Medical Science

102. Jahrestagung der DOG

Deutsche Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft e. V.

23. bis 26.09.2004, Berlin

Problems in Diagnostic and Therapy of ocular Allergies

Meeting Abstract

Search Medline for

  • corresponding author M. Zierhut - Dept. of Ophthalmology, University of Tuebingen

Evidenzbasierte Medizin - Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. 102. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Ophthalmologischen Gesellschaft. Berlin, 23.-26.09.2004. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2004. Doc04dogFR.16.12

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/dog2004/04dog313.shtml

Published: September 22, 2004

© 2004 Zierhut.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.


Outline

Text

Background

Ocular allergies belong to the most challenging inflammatory disorders of the eye. Despite improvements in the therapy of these disorders, this presentation summarizes updated problems in the diagnostic and therapy.

Diagnostic

Normally seasonal rhinoconjunctivitis and contact allergy can be differentiated by history from other types of ocular allergy. Using the general differentiation and terms, this is not always possible in atopic and vernal keratoconjunctivitis. For this a new concept will be presented, which assumes that "atopy" is the only systemic disorder, leading to ocular allergy (like sarcoid as the underlying disease for any type of uveitis). So, all ocular allergies, which are in atopic patients, should be termed "atopic conjunctivitis.

Therapy

Faults in the therapy of ocular allergy will be presented. This starts with recommendation of useless drugs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) or drugs which are not effective enough (artifical tears), but also the use of topical corticosteroids which is still ordered much too often, for longterm and uncritical, and the non recommendation of more recent developed drugs, especially for atopic keratoconjunctivitis.

Conclusion

Following some diagnostic advices and using an updated therapy regimen the prognosis even of the worst types of ocular allergy is much more favourable today then in previous days.