Zoster Clinic at Moorfields Eye Hospital over the

SUMMARY Patients with herpes zoster undergo extensive screening to detect underlying malignant disease which is compromising their immunity. In a restrospective survey of 1000 patients with herpes zoster ophthalmicus 12 patients had malignant disease which was known on presentation. No new cases were detected or discovered on follow-up. Three patients developed a disseminated rash, but none of these had an underlying malignant disease. For many years it has been suggested that patients contracting herpes zoster have compromised im-unity1- and the zoster infection is symptomatic of an underlying immunosuppressive process. How-ever, zoster occurs widely in the community, especially in the elderly, and it was our impression that most of the patients we saw with herpes zoster ophthalmicus (which constitutes 7 % of all zoster infection)5 had good general health prior to con-tracting it. We therefore decided to carry out a retrospective study on our patients to see if this impression was correct and to see if the infection and ocular com-plications were more severe in those patients with underlying disease. Patients and methods Our study was based on patients attending th