Rationale for Adjunctive Topical Corticosteroids in Bacterial Keratitis

Bacterial keratitis is a major cause of vision loss worldwide.¹Despite the development of newer broad-spectrum antibiotics, the scope of the problem appears to have grown in the United States, where the incidence of ulcerative keratitis was found in a community-based study to have increased by 435% from 1950 to 1988.²This rise may have been secondary to prior underreporting of bacterial keratitis but notably also occurred during a period of growth of 1 important risk factor: contact lens wear.³