Chronic conjunctivitis

Conjunctivitis is already a very common eye disease. The most common one is chronic conjunctivitis. After suffering from conjunctivitis, you will feel that there is something in your eyes, and it will occur. The eyes will easily become tired, especially when you wake up in the morning. There will be a lot of secretions in the eyes. Conjunctivitis will have a great impact on our daily life. The most important thing is to take scientific treatment in time.

Everyone should know about chronic conjunctivitis. Suffering from this disease will make your eyes very uncomfortable, and you will always feel like there is something in your eyes. Such inflammation usually lasts for a long time and will have a lot of impact on your daily work and life. Seek medical treatment promptly.

Some people have red eyes for a long time, which may be mild or severe at times. This is most likely due to chronic conjunctivitis. Chronic conjunctivitis is often bilateral and sometimes very stubborn and difficult to cure. There are many causes of this disease, the most important of which is infection. It can turn into a chronic disease due to uncured acute inflammation or incomplete treatment. Most of them are bacterial infections, such as Morax-Axenfeld bacteria and Streptococcus, etc. It can also appear as chronic symptoms at the beginning when the virulence of the pathogenic bacteria is not high and the body's resistance is strong. The second factor causing the disease is stimulation, which is the most common in clinical practice, such as stimulation from poor sanitary environment, bad hygiene habits, lack of sleep, and excessive smoking and drinking. Visual fatigue caused by eye diseases such as entropion, chronic dacryocystitis, blepharitis, refractive errors, and strabismus can all cause the disease. In addition, drugs such as mydriatics, miotics, as well as irritation from cosmetics, shampoos, etc. can also cause it. The main symptoms of chronic conjunctivitis are eye discharge and conjunctival congestion. There is not much secretion, which is mucous. When you wake up in the morning, you will find secretion at the inner canthus, and white foamy secretion can be seen at the canthus during the day. Conjunctival congestion is mainly congestion of the eyelid conjunctiva, and the dilated blood vessels are clear. If inflammation persists for a long time, the conjunctiva may become thickened, but there will be no scars or pannus. The patients perceive mild symptoms, mainly itching, burning, foreign body sensation, dryness, heavy eyelids, visual fatigue, etc. The symptoms are usually more obvious at night or when working at close range, but some patients do not feel any discomfort. Caused by Morax-Axenfeld bacteria, accompanied by symptoms of canthal blepharitis.

The treatment must first find the cause of the disease, eliminate the pathogenic factors, and then carry out appropriate treatment for different causes of the disease. For those caused by bacteria, give appropriate antibiotic eye drops and eye ointments, and add an appropriate amount of astringent eye drops. For non-bacterial cases, after finding the cause and eliminating it, apply 0.25% to 0.5% zinc sulfate eye drops or appropriate amounts of corticosteroid eye drops topically.

A few points to note

A considerable number of patients with chronic conjunctivitis will have conjunctival stones. Conjunctival stones are coagulations of desquamated epithelial cells and degenerative cells accumulated in the depressions of the eyelid conjunctival epithelium or deep tubular crypts, and are not true stones. There are small, hard, yellow-white dot-like protrusions on the conjunctiva of the eyelid, shaped like broken rice. Some are scattered in dot-like shape, while others are densely packed in groups. Initially, the stone is located deep and buried under the conjunctiva. Generally, there are no subjective symptoms. Later, it gradually emerges on the surface of the conjunctiva. Only when the nodule protrudes from the surface of the conjunctiva will there be a foreign body sensation, or even cause corneal abrasion. In this case, it can be removed with a knife tip or injection needle under surface anesthesia.

The main reason why chronic conjunctivitis is difficult to cure is that some irritating factors are often not eliminated in time. Therefore, in addition to eye drops and hot compress treatment, efforts should be made to improve the environment and minimize contact with irritants. For people who must work in special environments with a lot of smoke or other irritating factors, wearing goggles with hoods is a better way to prevent chronic conjunctivitis. In addition, it is also important to eliminate bad hygiene habits, maintain adequate sleep, quit smoking and limit alcohol, and avoid stimulation from cosmetics, shampoos, etc. to prevent chronic conjunctivitis. Practice has shown that as long as the cause is clear and the treatment and maintenance are appropriate, most chronic conjunctivitis can be cured.

Finally, it’s worth noting that chronic conjunctivitis isn’t the only cause of long-term redness and bloodshot eyes. If the eyes are red and congested for a long time, in addition to chronic conjunctivitis, other diseases should also be considered, such as chronic keratitis, chronic iridocyclitis, internal carotid cavernous sinus fistula, etc. Because these diseases can also manifest as long-term redness and congestion of the eyes and are easily misdiagnosed, they should not be taken lightly.

We should all pay attention to chronic conjunctivitis. When there are some abnormal conditions in our eyes, such as redness, swelling, and foreign body sensation, we should check in time to see if we have conjunctivitis. In addition, some other reasons can also cause eye discomfort. Especially for the elderly, they should pay more attention to their eye health in normal times.