AIM: To observe the role of confocal microscopy in infectious keratitis management.

METHODS:Totally 466 patients(467 eyes)diagnosed as infectious keratitis from January 2010 to December 2013 were retrospectively studied. the corneas were examined early by in vivo confocal microscopy. The characteristics of their images and clinical features were studied and summarized.

RESULTS:All patients were recorded, the average age was 54.4±13.0 years, in which 264 cases(56.7%)were male, and 202 cases(43.3%)were female. In the 466 patients, 190(40.8%)were fungal keratitis, 148(31.8%)were viral keratitis, 125(26.8%)were bacterial keratitis and 3(0.6%)were acanthamoeba keratitis. There were fungal hyphae in the images of fungal keratitis. Amebic cysts were found in acanthamoeba keratitis.

CONCLUSION:Confocal microscope can help the early diagnose and treatment of infectious keratitis. It is a noninvasive imaging technique that provides high resolution images of ocular structures at a cellular level and infectious keratitis represents one of its most important clinical uses.