The opioid epidemic has placed a significant burden on the US healthcare system, and optometry has proved to be no exception. Given that intravenous drug abuse is a major risk factor for endogenous endophthalmitis, researchers investigated drug-related incidence rates and found that this patient group accounts for an increasing proportion of cases.

The cross-sectional study of 56,839 patients admitted for endogenous endophthalmitis revealed a four-fold increase in the hospital admission rate between 2003 and 2016. About 14% of these patients had a history of drug use, which was most common among younger male patients.

“Clinicians should maintain a high index of suspicion for endophthalmitis when evaluating patients with intraocular inflammation in the setting of drug dependence or use,” the researchers wrote in their paper.