How uveitis is treated

Uveitis can cause severe pain in the eye and the ophthalmologist Cristina Fonseca explains how to treat this infection:

Treatment of uveitis aims to eliminate inflammation, relieve pain and prevent tissue damage in order to prevent vision loss. Treatments depend on the type of uveitis present and its cause. Therefore, if the cause is infectious, treatment has to be directed at the agent that is responsible using antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, in possible association with other drugs that control inflammation. If the cause is presumed to be autoimmune, the basis of treatment is the use of corticoids in the first phase to eliminate the inflammation, which can be administered topically, regionally or systemically. But prolonged use of these drugs can trigger side effects, which are potentially severe, so they should be associated with or replaced by appropriate immunosuppressive medication.

Another important situation, and it sometimes skips the question, is whether they have surgical treatment. Inflammations by themselves do not have a surgical treatment, although the use of local treatments may require a minor surgical procedure, namely the local injection of corticoids.

What can be treated surgically, however, are the complications that arise from the inflammation, such as cataracts or ocular hypertension, which may require surgery to resolve.

These surgeries are a little bit more complex than the usual more routine ones, since prior and concomitant control of the inflammation is necessary for them to be performed safely. In addition to all this, the use of systemic medication and even the pre-surgery control of this inflammation can trigger severe side effects. Therefore, the use of these drugs implies a very important monitoring of the side effects and the underlying pathology of each patient.

It is very important in these patients that we have a very close collaboration with other medical specialties, namely infectiology, internal medicine and rheumatology - so this collaboration and the creation of these multidisciplinary teams is fundamental for the correct and up-to-date follow-up of these patients with uveitis.

In tomorrow's programme we talk about double vision.

With the support of the Portuguese Society of Ophthalmology.