Pneumococci in ocular disease of children and their treatment.

A total of 171 isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae were obtained from eyes of children who had congenital dacryocystitis, congenital cataract and glaucoma, acute bacterial conjunctivitis, corneal ulceration, nasolacrimal duct block, or discharging socket, or who had developed ectropion, endophthalmitis and orbital cellulitis. The highest number of strains was obtained from cases of dacryocystitis (74.4%), followed by conjunctivitis (8.2%) and those having developed nasolacrimal duct block (7.6%). The least overall resistance was to erythromycin (17.6%) and chloramphenicol (31.0%). Erythromycin being unavailable for ocular use in India, chloramphenicol was reported to be one of the best drugs against pneumococcal ocular infections in children, the other being cloxacillin, a 2.5% solution of which is made from injectable cloxacillin and used as an ophthalmic preparation. Their use on patients has met with considerable success. Nineteen out of 20 isolates were typeable--the types being 3, 46, 8, 28, 29, 45, 21 and 18. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report from a developing country of serotyping ocular strains of pneumococci.