[Common and difficult].

AIMS: To find out the prevalence of ocular injury and infection among dental personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred and four dental personnel. METHOD: A questionnaire completed by researchers and observation during practice. RESULTS: The response rate was 81%. Dentists and dental technicians had a similar prevalence (42.3%) of foreign bodies in their eyes during the period of one month. Almost 50.5% of dentists rarely had foreign bodies in their eyes, while only 22.2% of dental technicians claimed the same. The majority of dental surgery assistants (73.6%) never experienced foreign bodies in their eyes. Only 27.0% of female personnel had foreign bodies in their eyes as compared to 73.0% of male personnel, while only 28.5% of females had conjunctivitis as compared to 71.4% among male personnel. 75% of regular eye protector wearers (EPW) never had foreign bodies while 67.2% EPW never had conjunctivitis. Dental technicians were more prone to ocular injury, 13.8% as compared to 4.4% of dentists. Only 30% of the regular eye protector wearers suffered ocular injury. CONCLUSIONS: Protection of the eyes should be emphasised and practised at undergraduate level. The awareness of eye protection should be highlighted at all clinical and research symposia. Further studies should be conducted to assess the financial implications of ocular injuries and infections in dental institutions and practices. Recommendations are made for universal precautions and the observation of safety at work guidelines by all dental team members.

Conjunctivitis↗

PubMed2001

Pulmonary involvement in a child with ligneous conjunctivitis and homozygous type I plasminogen deficiency.

Ligneous conjunctivitis (LC) is a rare disorder characterized by a chronic course of recurrent membranous lesions at conjunctivae. Pseudomembranes of other mucous membranes have been reported in patients with LC, but to the best of our knowledge, no case with alveolar involvement has been described. Here, we report a 2.5-year-old girl with LC who had tracheoaveolar involvement and homozygous type I plasminogen deficiency. Tracheal involvement was diagnosed by bronchoscopic biopsy and alveolar involvement with postmortem biopsy. She was shown to be homozygous for frameshift mutation in plasminogen exon 14 (Gly565ins-G) with molecular genetic examination of DNA which was obtained from parafin embedded postmortem lung tissue. Ligneous inflammation of the upper and lower respiratory tract must be considered in children with LC and recurrent respiratory tract problems.

Conjunctivitis↗