Treatment/Therapy
The aim of the treatment is to bring about rapid relief of pain and reduction of skin lesions. The aim is to keep the risk of infection and spread of the pathogen as low as possible. Another very important goal is to prevent or alleviate complications such as post-zoster neuralgia.
These are severe and persistent pains in the affected skin area that persist beyond shingles. The treatment of shingles in the eye consists of a systemic therapy with the virus-inhibiting drug Aciclovir. In addition, depending on the intensity of the pain, painkillers ranging from paracetamol to mild opioids are used.
Good pain medication is important to prevent possible complications such as the above-mentioned post-zoster neuralgia. Locally, the blisters can be dried out and treated anti-inflammatory. If the eye or cornea is also affected, certain local virus-inhibiting ointments or eye drops are used.
Antiviral therapy for shingles in the head and neck area is always urgently needed and if started early enough, the course of the disease can be shortened, the healing process accelerated and the rate of complications reduced. Shingles involving the eye can lead to the most severe complications, even with intensive therapy. It is therefore generally not advisable to treat this form of shingles with home remedies.
It can only be advised, in the sense of hygiene precautions, to wash all towels and washcloths hot. In addition, direct sunlight and working at a computer screen should be avoided. In any case, however, a medically guided drug therapy should take place.
Duration
Usually the burning and painful preliminary stage of the skin areas lasts two to three days before the first blisters form. The phase of blister formation again takes two to three days before they burst open, dry out and form yellowish-brown crusts. Healing of the ophthalmic zoster takes two to three weeks.
Complications
If an infection with varicella zoster viruses occurs in the area of the eyes, there is a risk that these viruses reach the optic nerves via the trigeminal nerve. In the worst case, this can lead to long-term damage to the cornea, resulting in poorer vision (also known as visual loss) and even blindness of the eye. Another complication is post-zoster neuralgia. This is a severe pain in the affected areas that goes beyond shingles.
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