Introduction

A 5-month-old domestic short hair cat with bilateral deep corneal wounds was presented to our pet clinic. After a week local antibiotics therapy decided to do corneal keratotomy. Post-operative therapy included topical antibiotics and analgesics. To achieve better results used N-acetylcysteine and autologous serum individually.

Objectives

Corneal ulceration is a common problem in cats. N-acetylcysteine has been used in ophthalmology to treat corneal diseases. Autologous serum can be used in most ulcerate keratitis, too. Although we cannot find any comparative studies of the effects of N-AC compared with autologous serum on ulcerate corneal healing in cats.

Methods

This cat with bilateral deep corneal ulcers treated topically on right eye with one drop of N-acetylcysteine 2% and on the left eye used one drop of autologous serum every 2 hours. These drops reduced to every 4 hours after first week. Corneal ulcers were measured by fluorescein staining every 2 days to determine the extent of progression in 30 days treatment period.

Results

Both N-acetylcysteine and autologous serum were significantly decrease healing time. Clinical examination 30 days after operation showed that corneal haze were lesser in treated eyes compared to the imagination. Consequently the result of this experiment showed that topical autologous serum and N-AC can be useful in treatment of corneal ulcers.

Conclusions

Eye drops made from autologous serum or N-AC have a tear like biochemical character and supply nutritional components. This drop supports viability, proliferation and migration of ocular surface epithelial cells better than unpressed pharmaceutical tear.