Sakovich V. M.¹, Alifanov I. S.², Scherbakov B. D.², Bereznyuk L. G.²

¹SE “Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy of Health Ministry of Ukraine”, Dnipro, Ukraine
²MI “Dnipropetrovsk Regional Ophthalmological Hospital”, Dnipro, Ukraine

 Abstract

Background. Anterior uveitis is the most common form of inflammation of the uveal tract of human eye. The complications of anterior uveitis may result from inadequate treatment and include cataract, posterior synechiae formation, secondary glaucoma. Not only treatment, but the observation and monitoring of anterior eye segment structures are difficult tasks for ophthalmologist because of subjectivism of clinical examination data.

 Purpose. To describe the optical densitometry data of cornea of patients with anterior uveitis for assessing the dynamic and severity of pathological changes.

 Materials and methods. We use Pentacam HR system (Oculus Optikgeräte GmbH) for monitoring the corneal transparency of 67 patients with uveitis of different etiology. All of the patients have a disease of one eye, the over one is the control. The patients with history of any corneal scarring pathology were excluded from the study. All participants underwent a standard anti-inflammation therapy. The optical densitometry measured three times: at 1st day of hospitalization, at discharge from the hospital (usually the 10–14 day) and after 1 month of follow-up. All statistical evaluations were performed by paired Student test.

 Results. The mean value of densitometry was 29.6 densitometric units (DU) in test group at 1st measurement, 23.8 DU at 2nd and 19.2 at 3rd after one month from beginning of the disease. In control group it was 19.4 DU, 17.9 DU and 18.8 DU correspondingly. The optical density of cornea in eyes with uveitis was significantly higher at 1st and 2nd measurements (p1 = 0.032, p2 = 0.045). The difference at 3rd examination was not statistically valid (p3 = 0.063) and demonstrated the full recovery of corneal transparency.

 Keywords: anterior uveitis, keratotopography, optical densitometry.

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Received: 11 May 2016

Published: December 2016