With choroiditis and cyclitis, albuminuria, nephritis, mellituria,
leukæmia, petechial fever, contagious pneumonia. Photophobia,
contracted pupil, redness around optic disc, enlarged retinal vessels,
white and gray spots and radiating lines, exudates, clots, fatty
degeneration. Treatment: correct primary disease.
Retinitis is usually an accompaniment of choroiditis and cyclitis, but
it also occurs as a complication in a number of constitutional maladies,
such as albuminuria, nephritis, mellituria, leukæmia, petechial fever,
contagious pneumonia, etc. Fröhner records a case in a leukæmic horse,
Peters in one suffering from petechial fever, Schindelka in cases of
contagious pneumonia in the horse, and Eversbusch in recurrent
ophthalmia of the horse, and under other conditions in dogs.
The attack is accompanied at the outset with much photophobia and
contraction of the pupil. When this is dilated and the fundus of the eye
examined with the ophthalmoscope, the retina is seen to be reddened for
some distance around the optic disc and the blood-vessels are materially
enlarged. Later, white or gray spots and lines are seen in and around
the disc, tending to assume a radiating direction, and the retina at
large, on careful examination may have a distinctly striped appearance.
Brownish, reddish or light colored exudates and hæmorrhages may be made
out in certain cases between retina and hyaloid, or between the retina
and choroid. Fatty degeneration of the fibrous tissue is common.
_Treatment_ must be first that for the primary disease of which the
retinitis is a complication, and the result will depend on how amenable
that affection is to therapeutic measures. In advanced albuminuria or
mellituria, the retinitis, which is usually double, is hopeless, while
in contagious pneumonia, petechial fever, leukæmia and other less fatal
affections, retinitis in its initial stages may recover. In cases of
advanced disease with serious structural changes in the retina, recovery
cannot be looked for.