Dissection of internal carotid artery presenting as isolated ischaemic optic neuropathy

Abstract

Carotid artery dissections are one of the important reasons of cerebrovascular events that are observed before the age of 45. Besides the local findings such as head, neck and face pains, Horner syndrome findings, pulsatile tinnitus and cranial nerve involvements, some other symptoms such as ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attacks and amaurosis fugax can also be observed in the approximately three quarters of patients. Ischemic optic neuropathy may be seen as %4 in the carotid artery dissections and it mostly accompanies other ischemic local symptoms. It is rare to observe the ischemic optic neuropathy as the first and unique finding in the carotid artery dissections. In this study, a 55 year old male patient with carotid artery dissection was represented. He did not have any other complaint, except the sudden unilateral visual loss and he was sent to our clinics from the opthalmology clinics in order to search for the etiology of ischemic optic neuropathy. It should be kept in mind that there can be a possibility to have carotid artery dissections in patients with unilateral visual loss.