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Systemic Toxicity of Drugs Applied to the Eye

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Pharmacology of Ocular Therapeutics

Abstract

When a drug is administered to treat, diagnose or mitigate any ocular condition, it may produce certain undesirable effects besides the desirable or therapeutic one. When a drug is administered systemically, its absorption in the eye is restricted by various factors including the ocular barriers. Still, certain drugs are able to breach this barrier and thus can cause toxicity. Similarly, drugs given topically or by the invasive ocular route can cross the blood ocular barrier to cause systemic toxicity. This chapter discusses the systemic toxicity of drugs applied on eye including the anti-glaucoma agents, drugs acting on autonomic nervous system, anti-inflammatory agents, antimicrobial agents, drugs used for ocular neovascularization conditions and preservatives used in ophthalmic preparations. This chapter also briefly describes about the ocular toxicity caused by the systemically administered drugs.

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Correspondence to Thirumurthy Velpandian BPharm, MS(Pharmacol), PhD .

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Sharma, H.P., Vijayakumar, A.R., Velpandian, T. (2016). Systemic Toxicity of Drugs Applied to the Eye. In: Velpandian, T. (eds) Pharmacology of Ocular Therapeutics. Adis, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25498-2_14

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