This study investigated the clinical manifestation and risk factors associated with remission in filamentary keratitis.
Retrospective, interventional, comparative case series.
We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 116 patients with filamentary keratitis diagnosed and treated between January 2012 and December 2018. We investigated the five causative factors including brain lesion, dry eye syndrome, autoimmune disease, ocular surgery or injury and others, treatment methods and duration, and remission status, and analyzed the risk factors associated with remission.
The mean age of the patients was 56.9 ± 19.1 years and the mean follow-up duration was 14.9 ± 22.8 months. The most common underlying condition associated with filamentary keratitis was identified as a brain lesion (36.2%), followed by dry eye syndrome (30.2%) and autoimmune disease (24.1%). A comparison of remission rates among the causative factors revealed that cases associated with brain lesions had significantly lower remission rates (33.3%) than those associated with other causative factors (>60%) (P = 0.001). After adjustment for sex, age, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension, the treatment failure rate in patients affected by brain lesions was 6.602-fold higher than that associated without brain lesion (P = 0.001). The treatment method-dependent differences in the remission rate were observed in brain lesion and dry eye syndrome (P = 0.041 and 0.005, respectively).
The most common condition leading to filamentary keratitis was a brain lesion, followed by dry eye syndrome and autoimmune disease. The treatment failure rate was statistically significantly low only in patients with filamentary keratitis associated with brain lesions.

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