gms | German Medical Science

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.

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.

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.

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.