Retrobulbar optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis

Purpose
The aim of the study was to analyze the cases of retrobulbar neuritis and their connection with multiple sclerosis

Material and methods
We follow in a retrospective (1989-2004) study 86 patients with retrobulbar optic neuritis, 59.3% of whom were females and 40.7% males.

Results
Recurrent retrobulbar optic neuritis was observed in 8 patients (9.3%), it was 7% of all eyes and in 27 patients (31.4%), that is 47.8% of all eyes, it was bilateral. Multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 8 cases, the same number of the patients was already treated because of SM. The most common initial symptom was decrease in visual acuity, which was poor (0.1 or worse) in 60% of the cases at the beginning. Pain occurred in 29.7%, pupillary defects in 28.7%, temporal or total pallor of the optic disc in 32.6% of the patients. Central field defect was rather rare in the group studied (22.7%), to compare with paracentral or peripheral one (46.6%). In most cases of the visual evoked potentials we noticed the elongation in the latency of P100. Among 31 cases of MRI examination of the central nervous system demyelination lesions have been revealed in 25.8% .

Conclusions
We observed more cases of bilateral optic neuritis and paracentral defects than other authors. A number of diagnosed multiple sclerosis patients was high taking into consideration relatively short period of observation.