Objective: To determine the clinical features of 272 patients who were diagnosed with optic neuritis at an ophthalmological clinic in Japan. Methods: We reviewed the records of patients examined between January 1977 and late June 1999. Results: The ratio of women to men was 1.7 : 1. The mean age at onset was 35 years and 80.5% were unilateral. The most frequent complaint was a vision decrease in 82.4%. The disc appeared normal in 38.5%. The median visual acuity at onset was 0.1; it was 1.0 at the recovered stage. The mean time required for visual recovery was 92.3 days from the onset. The most common known cause of optic neuritis was multiple sclerosis (MS)(22.8%). The recurrence rate was 22.0% and the mean number of recurrences was 2.9. The time for the development of disc pallor was 124.8 days. Conclusions: We found no racial difference in the incidence of MS as has been reported between Caucasians and Japanese.

We found that refractive errors were present in about 80% of 650 mentally retarded infants and children. The appropriate spectacles were prescribed for 75%. Evaluation of the effectiveness of wearing spectacles was based on the observation of their daily behavior and visually evoked cortical potentials to pattern stimuli (PVECP). Despite difficulties, we are able to record PVECPs in 160 subjects, of whom PVECPs were detectable in 140 (87.5%). The amplitudes of PVECPs with spectacles were larger than those without spectacles in 55.2% of the 105 subjects whose PVECPs were examined both with and without spectacles.

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