Doctors warn that covid-19 may be able to cause persistent eye problems. A new study suggests that some people who survive a serious infection can develop growths in the back of their eyes that can lead to vision loss. It is not yet clear how covid-19 can cause these growths, or if people with milder covid-19 are risk of this complication.
Researchers from the French Neuroradiology Society looked at of medical records of certain patients with severe Covid-19. These patients had all received a brain MRI at some point during their illness, which allowed the researchers to look for possible abnormalities in and around the eye.
In all, they looked at data from 129 patients in 16 hospitals who were infected during the first wave of the pandemic in France, between March and May 2020. Nine of these patients (7%) showed signs of nodules around the back of the eyeball, and most had growths on both eyes. Eight patients had also been in intensive care.
There have been occasional reports of people on covid-19 with abnormal test results or health problems related to the eye, such as conjunctivitis (pink eye). But the authors say their study is the first study to attempt to estimate how often this happens through MRI data. The findings should be enough to convince doctors to look for possible eye problems in patients with severe illness, they add, especially since they can be difficult to spot at first.
“Serious eye problems will go largely unnoticed as these patients are often treated in intensive care units for much more serious, life-threatening conditions,” they wrote in their paper, published Tuesday in the journal Radiology. “Our data support the need for screening and follow-up of these patients to provide appropriate treatment and improve management of potentially serious ophthalmic manifestations.”
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The results have their limitations. They cannot conclusively demonstrate that having covid-19 led to this eye growth, nor can they explain how it would have happened if the disease were responsible. One theory put forward by the authors is that the infection reached the eyes and directly damaged the retina. Another is that inflammation indirectly caused by an infection is the main culprit. ItIt is even possible that the practice of placing patients on their stomach (the prone position) –a common intervention that has been shown to help patients breathe more easily– could have contributed to defective drainage of veins connected to the eye. Pre-existing circulatory problems, which are common in patients with diabetes, can also be a factor.
The researchers are already working on future studies to better understand these potential complications. This includes proactively studying severe covid-19 patients from more recent waves of the pandemic, which would happen confirm or these growths and other eye problems are really the result of the disease and not a previous one, hidden problem. Survivors with these growths are also monitored to see if they are at long-term increased risk.term vision problems. And the researchers are following a similar study, aimed at patients with mild to moderate covid-19.
“We have initiated a prospective study using high-resolution special MR images to explore the eye and orbit in patients with mild to moderate COVID,” said lead author Augustin Lecler, a radiologist and associate professor at the University of Paris. a pronunciation published by the Radiological Society of North America, which publishes Radiology. “Therefore, we will be able to know whether our findings were specific to severe COVID patients or not.”