Epidemic Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis in Korea.

Kim, Jae Ho; Shin, In Sun; Rhee, Sang Wook; Lee, Chi Whu; Kim, Jae Duk

Original Article

Journal of the Korean Ophthalmological Society 1972;13(1):17-21.
Published online January 1, 2001.

Epidemic Hemorrhagic Conjunctivitis in Korea.

Jae Ho Kim, In Sun Shin, Sang Wook Rhee, Chi Whu Lee, Jae Duk Kim

¹Department of Ophthalmology, Catholic Medical College and Center, Seoul, Korea.
²Eye Section Capital Armed Forces General Hospital, ROK, Seoul, Korea.

Abstract

An unusual form of epidemic conjuctivitis swept through Korea between July and December, 1971. The clinical features of all the cases were uniform and presented marked conjunctival and subconjunctivai hemorrhages in bulbar conjunctiva varied from few minute pin-point petechia to large blotches of frank hemorrhage, and the upper half of the bulbar conjunctiva was invariably the initial site of the hemorahagic lesion, which later spread to the entire bulber conjunctiva, and absent of corneal involvement, such as punctate keratitis, fever and pharyngitis, with rapid and short clinical course of about 10 days. The clinical features strongly suggested that the epidemic hemorrhagic coujunctivitis, which produced subconjunctival hemorrhage instead of punctate keratitis, was presumably caused by a variant type of an adenovirus of epidemic kerato-conjunctivitis.