Central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) causes a blockage of the main blood supply to the retina resulting sudden, painless vision loss in the affected eye. Unfortunately, this vision loss is usually permanent and an important part of our research has focused on developing strategies to protect vision when a CRAO occurs.
We were somewhat surprised to find that our patients seemed to be at high risk for strokes, heart attacks and other serious medical problems, making us think that the CRAO may be the tip of the iceberg. In our newly published manuscript in the American Journal of Ophthalmology we describe over 100 patients who came to the hospital with a CRAO. Over 30% of our patients had a stroke on their MRI, 37% had critical narrowing of the carotid artery, 20% had an acute heart attack or other critical heart disease and 25% needed an urgent surgery. Over the following two years, 32% of patients with a CRAO had experienced another stroke, had suffered a heart attack or had died. Many of the underlying risk factors for these patients are treatable.
Based on this study we strongly encourage patients to develop sudden loss of vision to come immediately to the emergency room. While we are continuing to work on ways to rescue sight for patients with CRAO, we are already able to address most of the underlying medical risk factors that lead to bad outcomes, so long as we find them in time.
Full text of this new manuscript is available on our pre-print server. https://schraglab.com/lab-and-projects
American Journal of Ophthalmology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002939418304793?via%3Dihub