[Unilateral retinal pseudoarteritis after eyeball contusion]

Abstract

This article reports an unusual case of unilateral frosted branch angiitis. Three major groups of this disease are known: secondary frosted branch angiitis due to viral infection or autoimmune diseases, frosted branch-like angiitis related to malignant diseases and the rare entity of idiopathic frosted branch angiitis. A 58-year-old patient presented with strictly unilateral sheathing and partly occluded retinal arteries, vitritis and macular edema and 4 months prior to presentation he suffered a contusion of the eye with traumatic cataract and vitreous hemorrhage followed by cataract extraction and vitrectomy. The general medical history revealed that the contralateral eye and biochemical analyses were unremarkable despite slightly elevated antinuclear antibody (ANA) levels. Under high dose steroid therapy the patient showed slow improvement in all clinical findings. This case does not fit into any of the known groups and can therefore be defined as pseudoarteritis.