Sympathetic ophthalmia associated with uncomplicated retinal detachment surgery in a young male: An uncommon entity

Abstract

Sympathetic ophthalmia (SO) is a rare, bilateral granulomatous panuveitis of unknown etiology that follows accidental or surgical trauma to the uveal tissue of one eye. We describe an unusual case of an 11-year-old male patient who developed SO following retinal detachment (RD) repair in conjunction with pars plana vitrectomy in the right eye (RE). Twenty days following surgery, the patient presented with a recurrent RD in RE and bilateral multifocal exudative RDs, inflamed optic nerve with characteristic changes of SO detected by fluorescein angiography, and ultrasound B-scan in the left eye (LE). Aggressive and effective management with topical and systemic immunosuppressive agents permitted control of the disease with good visual outcome in LE.

Keywords

• Pars plana vitrectomy
• retinal detachment
• sympathetic ophthalmia