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The first 25 slides, exactly as they appear. The full deck has 41 content slides.
Ophthalmology
Optic Atrophy
Built from Khurana — Neuro-Ophthalmology
What’s inside
6 sections · 41 slides
What Optic Atrophy Actually Is
Building the idea from the wiring up
- Start with the plain idea
- A note on the word 'atrophy'
- The visual wiring behind the disc
- Two directions the nerve can die
- One rule that saves you from mistakes
- Optic atrophy in numbers
Causes and Inner Changes
A long list of diseases, one common end-point
- Why the cause list is so long
- Causes of optic atrophy (by category)
- Causes of optic atrophy (continued)
- What the tissue looks like under the microscope
How the Patient Presents
What to test and why each test matters
- Vision and colour — the first clues
- RAPD — the single most useful sign
- Eye movements and field-at-the-bedside
- Extra tests that sharpen the picture
Reading the Optic Disc
What makes it pale, and the patterns of pallor
- Why a healthy disc is pink — and why atrophy is pale
- Kestenbaum sign — counting the capillaries
- Pallor that points to a specific site
- Four ways the atrophic disc looks: (1) Primary
- (2) Secondary optic atrophy
- (3) Consecutive optic atrophy
- (4) Glaucomatous ('cavernous') optic atrophy
- The four types of optic atrophy compared
- The rest of the fundus — do not stop at the disc
Working Up the Cause
From the visual field to blood tests
- Perimetry — mapping the field defect
- Neuroimaging — chosen case by case
- Electrodiagnostic tests — objective function
- Second-line tests — hunt for a dangerous cause
Prognosis and Management
Why prevention beats cure here
- The hard truth about treatment
- Treating the underlying cause — where the wins are
- Adjuncts, the future, and living with it
- Three things to carry away
- Why does a post-geniculate (e.g. cortical) lesion NOT cause optic atrophy, whereas an optic tract lesion can?
- References
- Neuro-Ophthalmology