Comparison of Three Eye Care Methods in the Incidence of Keratitis in Patients Admitted to Intensive Care Units

Eye care in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) prevents eye diseases and vision loss. However, as preserving vital organs in patients who are hospitalized in ICUs seems to be more important than eye care, this important issue is often overlooked. There is also disagreement about eye care methods, and sometimes nurses provide eye care based on their personal opinions rather than standards. This can lead to keratitis in patients. Therefore, this study has been designed in order to compare three eye care methods for preventing keratitis in patients who are hospitalized in ICUs.

The present study is a double-blind clinical trial that was performed on 74 patients who were admitted to the ICU in 2018. Each patient was randomly assigned to one of the eye care groups by simple random method (dice throwing). For the first intervention group whose dice outcomes were 1or 4, the ointment and anti-allergy adhesive methods were considered. For the second intervention group with dice outcome of 2 or 5, eye ointment and artificial tears methods was considered and for the third intervention group with dice outcome of 3 and 6, anti-allergy adhesive methods and artificial tears were applied. Every eight hours the patientschr('39') eyes were washed with distilled water and cotton and the eye care was renewed. Their eyes were examined by an ophthalmologist on the first day and at the end of the seventh day using a fluorescein test.

At the end of the study, 60 eyes (30 patients) were analyzed. The incidence of ocular keratitis was the same in each of the three groups. Therefore the use of simple eye ointment, eye care by anti-allergic adhesive with a width of 1.25 and eye care by artificial tear method had no significant effect on the incidence of keratitis. Also, except for four cases, two of which were related to eye care with anti-allergic adhesive and two of which were related to eye care with artificial tears, that were not statistically significant, there were no reports of keratitis and eye involvement.

Eye care with simple eye ointment can be more effective in maintaining corneal health than the two methods of using adhesive and artificial tears, although this difference was not significant. It seems that keeping a constant amount of moist for eyes, in addition to keeping the eyelids closed, can prevent the occurrence of eye complications and disorders in patients that are admitted in ICUs and have a reduced level of consciousness.