LETTER

Central retinal venous occlusion with co-existent thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura and antiphospholipid syndrome

P T Murphy¹ and P Rao²

¹ Department of Haematology, Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, Shrewsbury, UK
² Department of Opthalmology

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P T Murphy, Department of Haematology, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9, Ireland;
philip.murphy@beaumont.ie

Accepted 13 March 2002

Keywords: central retinal venous occlusion; thrombocytopenic purpura; antiphospholipid syndrome

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Central retinal venous occlusion usually occurs in elderly patients with known risk factors such as raised intraocular pressure, arterial hypertension, atherosclerotic disease, or diabetes mellitus. In addition, central retinal venous occlusion infrequently occurs in individuals with hyperviscosity from leukaemia, polycythaemia, Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinaemia, sickle cell disease, and periphlebitis.¹ However, it has also been described in patients with antiphospholipid antibodies² and rarely in patients with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) (pentad of fever, microangiopathic haemolytic anaemia, thrombocytopenia, neurological abnormalities, and renal impairment).³ We describe central retinal venous occlusion in a 26 year old female patient with systemic lupus erythematous (SLE), in whom both TTP and antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) appear to have contributed to the pathogenesis. To our knowledge, co-existence of TTP and APS has not been previously reported in a case of central retinal venous occlusion.

The patient presented in 1994, aged 19, with arthralgia and fatigue. Haemoglobin was 3.5 g/dl and platelet . . . [Full text of this article]

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