Several different sets of criteria have been proposed to establish the diagnosis of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease (VKH). Various investigators have used the criteria proposed by Sugiura, those proposed by by the American Uveitis Society as well as the revised diagnostic criteria proposed by the First VKH International Workshop group. These three sets of criteria share several clinical features that are considered to be essential for establishing the diagnosis of VKH, including bilateral uveitis, meningismus, and other extraocular changes. The detection of cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis is considered to be an absolute in the criteria proposed by Sugiura but is not required for the diagnosis of VKH by the revised diagnostic criteria. We applied the latter diagnostic criteria to 28 well-documented patients with early phase VKH and to 88 patients examined during the late phase of VKH. All of these early and late phase patients fulfilled the criteria of the revised diagnostic criteria proposed by the workshop group, indicating 100% concurrence. However, none of the above proposed criteria were prospectively validated to show the positive and negative predictive value of the proposed criteria. Such a prospective study should be undertaken to address the validity of any one or all of the above sets of VKH diagnostic criteria.

Hispanic patients with VKH often present without extraocular changes during early phase of the disease. However, once the disease evolves into the chronic phase, integumentary system involvement may become apparent in some patients.

Herpetic uveitis was the commonest form of infectious uveitis, whereas Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease was most frequently seen as the non-infectious cause of uveitis in Thailand.