Eye Infections

Eye infections are an important cause of vision loss worldwide. Patients with these infections are commonly seen by primary care providers, internists, emergency medicine specialists, hospitalists, and ophthalmologists. Each year in the United States alone, conjunctivitis accounts for more than 550,000 visits to emergency departments1 and many more visits to outpatient offices, keratitis is diagnosed at more than 1 million office and emergency department visits,2 exogenous endophthalmitis complicates up to 0.1% of the more than 7 million cataract surgeries and intravitreal injections performed,3-5 and thousands of patients are admitted to general hospitals to treat vision-threatening eye infections such as endogenous endophthalmitis and infectious uveitis. This review summarizes the epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of eye infections. Figure 1 illustrates eye anatomy as it relates to eye infections. Table S1 in the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org, summarizes the microbiologic features, clinical characteristics, and treatment of these infections.