Managing corneal disease: focus on suppurative keratitis

Infections of the cornea can lead to corneal opacity and blindness if not identified quickly and managed appropriately. The terms infective keratitis, suppurative keratitis, and microbial keratitis are all used to describe suppurative infections of the cornea. These are characterised by the presence of white or yellowish infiltrates in the corneal stroma, with or without an overlaying corneal epithelial defect, and associated with signs of inflammation (Figure 1). The common symptomatic complaints of patients with suppurative keratitis are as follows (all with varying degrees of severity):