[Effectiveness of present-day therapy of purulent lesions of the cornea]

The treatment of 313 patients (317 eyes) with purulent injuries of the cornea was studied. The medication therapy was found to be effective in 173 patients (176 eyes), which made up 56.2%. The purulent process in the cornea was arrested after the therapeutic penetrating and lamellar keratoplasty in 62 patients (63 eyes or 20.1%). 74 patients (74 eyes or 23.7%) were cured through the loss of an organ: enucleation was made for 63 patients, evisceroenucleation--for 8 patients and evisceration--for 3 persons. Before the onset of purulent pathology, all removed eyes were blind due to different diseases and traumas. Pathomorphological examinations of 63 enucleated eyes showed, in 76.2% of cases, purulent-and-inflammatory changes only in anterior eye segment, and in 23.8% of cases they showed that the purulent process extended into the posterior segment structures of the eyeball; it is noteworthy that the signs of developing endophthalmitis were found only in 6.3% of cases. The obtained morphological data are indicative of that not all therapeutic possibilities were used to preserve the injured but unpromising (in the optic sense) eyes. We conclude that the absolute indication for removing an eye with purulent pathology of the cornea is the generalizing process, i.e. endophthalmitis or panophthalmitis.