Twenty years of acanthamoeba keratitis.

PURPOSE: We described the rate of Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) in a referral eye center in São Paulo, Brazil, through a retrospective review of clinical and laboratorial records of patients over 2 decades.

METHODS

From 1987 to 2006, a total of 581 requests for amoebic laboratory workup in cases of infectious keratitis were investigated. Statistical analyses were applied to analyze a tendency of AK cases.

RESULTS

Acanthamoeba species were cultured from corneal scrapings of 185 patients, 5 of them with bilateral infection. Eighty-three percent of those patients were related with contact lens wear.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggested that patients with AK have persisted and increased over time at our ophthalmology center. Contact lenses showed to be a potential risk factor. Amoebic corneal infection can be considered as a new but well-established disease in Brazilian ophthalmology and visual sciences.