Retinal Vasculitis Following COVID-19 Vaccination: Causation or Coincidence?

ABSTRACT

Background

With the popularity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination, some rare ocular adverse events have gradually been reported. This report shows a rare case of retinal vasculitis following COVID-19 vaccination.

Description

A 37-year-old male complained of unilateral severe vision loss 13 days after the first dose of an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine. The initial eye examination showed gray-white edema in the macula, and scattered patchy gray-white lesions in the peripheral retina, accompanied by peripheral retinal small vessel occlusion. After glucocorticoid treatment, the gray-white lesions gradually subsided. However, due to the initial severe damage in the fundus, macular and peripheral retinal lesions were significantly atrophied, and the vision recovery was poor.

Conclusion

The ocular adverse event in this report may be related to the inactivated COVID-19 vaccination, however, it is difficult to rule out the accidental rare adverse events after a large number of vaccinations.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• retinal vasculitis
• vaccination
• vaccine
• vision loss

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.