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Acute Bilateral Blindness
Author(s) -
Hoover Bradley W.,
Stack Lawrence B.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
academic emergency medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.221
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1553-2712
pISSN - 1069-6563
DOI - 10.1111/j.1553-2712.1996.tb03354.x
Subject(s) - medicine , psychogenic disease , blindness , complaint , pulmonary embolism , etiology , disease , emergency physician , intensive care medicine , emergency department , surgery , optometry , pathology , psychiatry , political science , law
Acute bilateral blindness is an emergent condition that may signal life‐threatening disease. This article details an emergency medicine approach to the patient with acute bilateral blindness, and reports a case of an elderly woman whose sole presenting complaint was acute loss of vision. She was ultimately diagnosed as having pulmonary embolism. The approach focuses on identification of life‐threatening disease processes, while differentiating between ocular. psychogenic, and cortical etiologies.