endophthalmitis

However, this invasive procedure is uncomfortable for patients, and carries the risk of serious ocular complications, such as endophthalmitis and retinal detachment.

"Our analysis of a national data set shows that the risk for endophthalmitis is no higher with Avastin and hints that there may actually be a lower endophthalmitis risk compared to Lucentis, so the proposed FDA restrictions for Avastin might have the unintended consequence of increasing the infection risk for patients," study senior author Dr. Brian VanderBeek, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a university news release.

National Library of Medicine has more about endophthalmitis.

But the findings showed that patients treated with Avastin do not have a higher risk of an eye infection called endophthalmitis than those treated with Lucentis, the study authors said.

Either way, it doesn’t look good for lens-wearers, who had enriched communities of pathogens that play key roles in conjunctivitis, keratitis and endophthalmitis—all inflammatory eye conditions, says Dominguez-Bello.