الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Vernal keratoconjunctivitis is known to be one of the most severe forms of ocular allergy with potential to cause corneal damage and permanent visual loss. Corneal involvement in VKC patients occurs in the form of superficial punctate keratitis, with superficial pannus, pseudogerontoxon, shield ulcer, astigmatism and keratoconus. Children with VKC have a high incidence of keratoconus and astigmatism and have more abnormal corneal topography patterns compared with normal eyes.
VKC is an important cause of hospital referral among children in many parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East with a prevalence of 5% reported for children in their first decade in Chad and Djibouti. The pathogenesis of VKC is complex and involves environmental, endocrine, racial, and genetic factors.
Recent epidemiological reports provide evidence of a genetic component to the disease. Studies of patients living in regions where the disease is rare (such as Europe) show that most VKC sufferers are first generation or second-generation immigrants from areas where the disease is endemic.
Therefore, this work was conducted to determine corneal topographic characteristics of children with vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) and compare the corneal topographic indices in VKC subjects with normal subjects. A cross sectional prospective study was conducted on children with vernal keratoconjunctivitis using Sheimpflug imaging system (Oculus Pentacam).
In our study we examined two groups:
group I: included 150 eyes of 75 Children with vernal keratoconjunctivitis aged between (7-19) years.
group II: include 150 eyes of 75 normal subjects with matched age and sex.
Results of the current study could be summarized as follow:
• Mean age of VKC patients was 11.45 years with standard deviation (SD) of 2.34 years, male patients were 38(50.7%) and female patients were 37 (49.3%), and mean age of normal group was 11.13 years with standard deviation (SD) of 2.66 years, the males were 35(46.7%) and Females were 40(53.3%).
• The Mixed type was the most common among 68 cases (45%), followed Palpebral type by 52 cases (34.7%). While, limbal type was the lowest presented among children with vernal keratoconjunctivitis by 30 cases (20%).
• Children n with VKC group had significantly increased of K1, K2 and K max, than of the normal group.
• There was a significant increase in the anterior elevations at the thinnest location(p<0.001) in the VKC patients (4.83 ± 4.74) than the control persons (2.50 ± 1.41). Also according to the posterior elevations at the thinnest location there was a significant increase in the VKC group (7.42 ± 9.16) than the control group