Three cases of sympathetic ophthalmitis setting in three weeks after excision of the other eye : with abstracts of cases already published / by Edward Nettleship.

  • Nettleship, Edward, 1845-1913.
Date:
1881
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three cases of sympathetic ophthalmitis setting in three weeks after excision of the other eye : with abstracts of cases already published / by Edward Nettleship. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/18
    Weeks after Excision of the other Eye. With abstracts of Cases already published. Read April 9, 1880. rTVHE occurrence of inflammation of one eye caused by _L disease of the other, but setting in after its enucleation, is so rare, and at the same time of such interest, both in its practical bearings and in regard to the etiology of the disease, that I think it desirable to communicate the two following cases, in which this result has unfortunately hap- pened in my own practice. I have also to thank Mr. Cowell and Mr. Mackinlay for permission to add the notes of a third case which has lately occurred in the practice of the former gentleman at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. So far as I know, only about six cases of the kind are on record, and of these abstracts are given at the end of this paper. I have heard the occurrence mentioned in conversation with several surgeons, but in such, as well as in the majority of the published cases, the interval between the excision of the damaged (exciting) eye and the onset of sympathetic in- flammation in its fellow has been very short, only a few days. The special point of interest in my own and Mr. Cowell’s cases is the much greater length of this interval. Case I. Removal of a shrunken fluid Cataract from an unsound and irritable eye ; loss of vitreous ; severe intraocular haemorrhage forty-eight hours later. Enucleation ten days after extrac- tion. Sympathetic inflammation of other eye with neuro- retinitis, irido-cyclitis, and glaucoma, beginning twenty-two days after enucleation. Eye lost. Charles Wilson, a pale, very nervous phthisical lad of 20, applied at the hospital on May 21, 1879, for advice respecting his right eye. I found complete white cataract with a large chalky-looking anterior polar (pyramidal) opacity projecting somewhat forwards, a larse central nebula of the cornea.