Ramakrishnan Sivakalai, Mohan Sivakami
BACKGROUND
“Papilloedema is defined as a passive, non-inflammatory oedema of the optic nerve head due to raised intracranial pressure,
which is almost always bilateral and without visual deficit”. Papilloedema is one of the true neuro-ophthalmic emergencies. We
wanted to study the etiological pattern, involvement of sixth cranial Nerve, visual acuity pattern, visual field and colour vision
pattern in papilloedema.
METHODS
The cases studied were the patients with papilloedema who presented to the department of neuro-ophthalmology at the
Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and Government Ophthalmic Hospital, Madras Medical College, Chennai. This is a crosssectional,
descriptive, non-interventional, hospital-based study. The period of study was from September 2008 to October 2009.
RESULTS
The common etiological factor was space occupying lesion, 44.4% of the patients had sixth cranial nerve paresis; more than
three forth of patients had normal visual acuity; less than half of the patients had visual field involvement; all patients had
normal colour vision pattern in papilloedema.
CONCLUSIONS
Papilloedema can be a manifestation of life-threatening conditions. So, the ophthalmologist should be able to detect early
papilloedema and refer them immediately.
