ocular manifestation of tuberculosis

purpose: to determine the prevalence of ocular involvement in patients with tuberculosis (tb) infection. methods: all patients with a new diagnosis of tb who were referred to zahedan tuberculosis center underwent a complete ophthalmic examination. any cases of known ophthalmic disease or previous ocular involvement were excluded from the study. prevalence of ocular involvement with 95% confidence interval (95% ci) was calculated. results: out of 444 eyes of 222 tb patients, 19 eyes (4.3%, 95% ci: 2.6-6.6%) of 17 patients (7.7%, 95% ci: 4.5-12.0%) had some ophthalmic lesions ascribable to tb. the most frequent ophthalmic lesions were choroidal tubercles in 4 eyes (21.1%); interstitial keratitis and acute iritis each in 3 eyes (15.8%); chorioretinitis, peripapillary nodule and lid lupus vulgaris each in 2 eyes (10.5%); and retinal vasculitis, vitritis and lateral rectus paresis each in one eye (5.3%). the ocular involvement was unilateral in 88.2%. multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that only the duration of tb before treatment had direct correlation with ocular involvement (odds ratio= 5.22, 95% ci: 1.57-17.35). conclusion: the frequency of ocular involvement in tb in the study population is at least 3 times greater than other countries. early treatment of tb can reduce ocular involvement and prevent other complications of the disease. key words: tuberculosis (tb), ocular involvement, iran