Ciprofloxacin as Treatment for Conjunctivitis

Abstract

The authors studied the bactericidal action and therapeutic effectiveness of ciprofloxacin in treating external ocular infections (bacterial conjunctivitis and bac-terial blepharoconjunctivitis). 108 ambulatory patients with clinical signs of con-junctivitis and blepharoconjunctivitis were enrolled in the study. All subjects under-went a conjunctival swab before starting therapy and at 10 days, to identify the causative bacteria and their susceptibility to ciprofloxacin, following routine micro-biological methods. The reported therapeutic success rate (95%) and bacteriological analysis confirmed the effectiveness of ciprofloxacin in subjects with bacterial con-junctivitis and bacterial blepharoconjunctivitis. In vitro tests conducted 10 days after treatment confirmed the in vivo therapeutic effectiveness, even for those infections characterized by a difficult etiological identification which interferes with specific antibiotic therapy.

Keywords:

• Ciprofloxacin
• bacterial conjunctivitis
• bacterial blepharoconjunctivi-tis