Brief Description, Types, Sign and Symptoms, Causes And Treatment Of Fungal Keratitis

Fungal keratitis is an inflammatory infection of the cornea (the clear, round dome covering the dark colored part of the eye) which is caused by fungal organism. 
The most common fungi involved include: Fusarium, Aspergillus and Candida.

Fungal keratitis can either be superficial keratitis or deep keratitis. In Superficial keratitis, the uppermost layers of the cornea are involved and keratitis usually heals with no scar on the cornea surface. In deep keratitis, the deeper corneal layers are affected and a scar may be left after healing. Depending on where this scar is located, it may or may not affect your vision. 

Fungal keratitis usually occurs after a corneal injury by vegetative (plant) materials and animal tails, for instance, when palm branch or the tail of an animal hits the eye of an individual. There is also an increased risk of developing fungal keratitis among contact lens wearers. Fungal keraitis can also occur when immunosuppressed individuals are exposed to the causative fungus. 

In addition to fungal keratitis, there are a number of other eye infections that leads to keratitis, some of which include:

Bacterial keratitis (caused by bacterial infection)

Viral keratitis (caused by herpes zoster viruses and herpes simplex)

Amoebic keratitis (often caused by Acanthamoeba and usually affecting contact lens wearers)

Photokeratitis (caused by exposing the eyes to intense ultraviolet radiation, e.g. welder's arc eye or snow blindness).

Keratomycosis - a greek terminology equivalent of fungal keratitis, should be differentiated from fungal keratitis as it is the fungal infection of the anterior part of the eye including the cornea and the pupil. 

Symptoms

Symptoms of fungal keratitis include the following:

• Fungal keratitis is dry looking.
• Often sudden pain in the affected eye.
• Affected eye is unusually red.
• Blurred or reduced vision.
• Increased sensitivity to light (photophobia).
• Excessive tearing or eye discharge

If you experience any of these symptoms above, especially when they come in a sudden onset, remove your contact lenses (if you are wearing any) and consult your eye doctor immediately. To prevent vision loss, fungal keratitis treatment must be started right away because if left untreated, it can lead to total and irreversible blindness.

 

Treatment

If you are a contact lens wearer, it is very vital to safely handle, clean and store your contact lenses to reduce your risk of developing keratitis.

Fungal keratitis is often treated with antifungal eye drops and oral medications. Treatment should be carried out immediately with fortified antifungal eye drops, initially every hour during the day and every two hours during the night. When there is poor patient compliance or when the condition is severe, subconjunctival injections maybe applied.

Surgical procedures (such as corneal transplantation) maybe carried out if the use of antifungal drugs is not effective in clearing the infection. In some cases, the corneal surgery may fail to restore vision and permanent vision impairment or blindness may eventually occur. This is why it is very important and practically advisable to visit your eye doctor whenever you experience any sign of eye infection no matter how minor it may be.

Wearing of dark goggles (sunshades) may reduce the photophobic symptoms that come with fungal keratitis.