Background: Vernal keratoconjunctivitis )VKC) is known to be one of the most severe forms of ocular allergy with potential to cause corneal damage and permanent visual loss. Corneal involvement in VKC patients occurs in the form of superficial punctate keratitis, with superficial pannus, pseudogerontoxon, shield ulcer, astigmatism and keratoconus. Children with VKC have a high incidence of keratoconus and astigmatism and have more abnormal corneal topography patterns compared with normal eyes.
Objective: To study pentcam based corneal changes in patients with chronic vernal keratoconjunctivitis and finding out prevalence of keratoconus in those patients.
Patients and Methods: This study was a descriptive controlled clinical trial (30 patients) including all patients with chronic vernal keratoconjunctivitis. Pentcam was done for both eyes. This study conducted on 30 patients with 60 eyes admitted from Damanhour Eye Hospital and Al-Hussien and Sayed Galal University Hospitals during the period from January 2020 till January 2021 with age ranged from 9 to 17 years with mean ± SD of 13.53 ± 2.87; they were 14 females (46.7%) and 16 males (53.3%).
Results: There was a statistically significant increase in the level of K2 and K max in positive keratoconus eyes than negative keratoconus. There was a statistically significant decrease in thinnest location (TL) in eyes with positive keratoconus than eyes with negative keratoconus. Also, the changes in TL (TL< 490) was found higher in eyes with positive keratoconus than eyes with negative keratoconus. There was no statistically significant difference between eyes with positive keratoconus than eyes with negative keratoconus regarding Y coordinate deviation. There was a statistically significant increase in belin ambrosia display deviation (Bad-d) in eyes with positive keratoconus than negative keratcnus. There was statistically significant relation found between rubbing severity and positive keratoconus.
Conclusion: Vernal keratoconjunctivities was fairly common among children, and proved to make certain changes in the corneal topography. Exposure to dust and family history were the major risk factors and rubbing of the eye is the major risk factor