The following symptoms and complaints may indicate optic neuritis (optic neuritis):
- Eye movement pain (eye movement pain; bulbar movement pain; bulbar pain (pressure, movement); 92% of patients).
- Visual loss (visual deterioration) (onset: within hours to days) [visual impression:
- Blurred vision to complete loss of visual acuity (vision loss).
- Disturbed color perception (colors are perceived as dirty and pale)]
Other notes
- In 99.6% of cases, the disease occurs unilaterally.
- Eye movement pain is absent in 8% of patients because the focus of inflammation is intracranial (“localized within the skull“), and thus outside the optic nerve, which is mobile.
- Improvement in 95% of cases; about 60% of patients achieve normal vision after 2 months.
- Typical optic neuritis is defined as follows:
- Age 18-50 years
- Appearance unilateral
- Eye movement pain
- Improvement of the complaints
- No evidence of systemic disease other than multiple sclerosis (MS).
- Uhthoff phenomenon: a transient deterioration in visual acuity (visual acuity) occurring after physical exertion-induced increase in temperature. The phenomenon is specific but occurs in only about half of patients with multiple sclerosis. Typical triggers are sports, hot showers and bathing.
