Solar retinopathy: A case report

Abstract

Sun-gazing is the main cause of solar retinopathy. A 20-year-old inebriated man lying in a park gazed at the sun for approximately three hours at noon. Forty-eight hours after sun-gazing, the patient experienced the symptoms of blurred vision, erythropsia, and central scotoma in the left eye. Visual acuity decreased from 6/6 to 6/60 in the left eye and fundi examinations showed a round, yellowish-white discoid lesion on the left fovea and a smaller one on the right fovea. Fluorescein angiography showed early dye leakage in the fovea of the left eye, that increased gradually in size and became fuzzy at the foveal border in the late phase. A small, central scotoma of the left eye was also found in the visual field test. One month later, the lesion in the fovea of the left eye became smaller and was surrounded by a coarse pigmented halo. Fluorescein angiography showed a window defect in the retinal pigment epithelium. Visual field testing disclosed that the central scotoma persisted, but became smaller. Six months after sun-gazing, a lamellar hole in the fovea of the left eye was detected by optical coherence tomography. The visual acuity was 6/6 in the right eye and 6/60 in the left eye, and was unchanged at the end of the six-month follow-up period.