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    Solar Retinopathy

    By Rita Couceiro, MD, Cláudia Loureiro, MD, and Sara Vaz-Pereira, MD, Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisbon, Portugal, and photographed by Dr. Couceiro.
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    Solar Retinopathy

    A 42-year-old man presented with acute, bilateral vision blurring after staring directly at the sun for several minutes. His visual acuity (VA) was 20/25 in both eyes. A small, yellow, round foveal lesion was identified in both fundi. Amsler grid testing revealed a bilateral central scotoma.

    Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) showed a full-thickness hyperreflectivity that extended from the inner retinal layers to the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). It also showed a localized disruption of the ellipsoid portion of the inner segments and RPE. These features are rarely documented and represent a very early stage of solar retinopathy.

    No treatment was warranted. At the two-month follow-up, the patient’s VA was restored to 20/20; however, a focal outer retinal layer disruption persisted on SD-OCT.

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