Coronavirus-19-Associated Retinopathy

ABSTRACT

Background: To describe the first case of Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) vision loss from an acute outer retinopathy.

Methods: A retrospective case report from a tertiary referral center using multimodal retinal imaging and clinical examination findings

Findings: A 40-year-old female developed significant vision loss in her right eye shortly after developing fever and myalgias. She was found to be COVID positive, while her systemic laboratory evaluation was otherwise unremarkable. Multimodal imaging was consistent with a white-dot-like outer retinopathy and she was started on systemic prednisone. Within 10 days of starting steroids, her vision, symptoms, and outer retinal changes on multimodal imaging were improving.

Interpretation: While exceedingly rare, COVID-19 can cause inflammatory-associated changes of the outer retina and significant vision loss.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID
• coronavirus
• outer retinopathy
• vision loss

Declaration of interests

None of the authors has any conflicts of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

During conduct of this research, R.C.R. was supported by the National Eye Institute (R01EY030989), and Research to Prevent Blindness (to the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center and R.C.R). The sponsors had no role in the design, conduct, or conclusions of this study.