Ocular Manifestations in Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Real World Multicenter Observational Study in Egypt

The aim of the work was to evaluate the ocular manifestations in the patients with COVID-19 and its role in the prediction of the course and the outcome of the disease.

This retrospective study was conducted at two tertiary referral COVID-19 isolation hospitals in two major university hospitals in Egypt. Two hundred and twenty-eight patients were enrolled in the study. The medical records of patients who had clinically confirmed COVID-19 between 1/5/2020 to 15/7/2020 were retrospectively reviewed. Data were collected from patient charts, including age, sex, accommodation, ocular manifestations, fever, headache, cough, dyspnea, anosmia, cyanosis, abdominal pain, anorexia, liver, kidney, cardiac manifestations, CT, X-ray finding, blood tests, and outcome of the disease.

Thirty-four patients with ocular manifestation were finally enrolled in the study with a mean age of 42.1 years; 20 patients (58.8%) were men. The incidence of ocular manifestation was 14.9% (34/228). All patients with ocular manifestations had conjunctivitis (redness, epiphora, foreign body sensation), which had been treated and resolved completely within 10 days in all patients without any permanent ocular damage. There was a trend between the presence of ocular manifestations and the associated milder disease course, although this trend was not statistically significant.

Ophthalmic manifestation is common in patients with COVID-19 and it occurs more frequently in patients with mild to moderate form of COVID-19, but it could not predict the patient’s mortality.