Difficulty in articulation following left progressive blurred vision

Abstract

Purpose: To report a case of Paracentral acute middle maculopathy (PAMM) caused by severe internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis and discuss the correlation between PAMM and ICA stenosis. Case description: A 67-year-old male patient presented with left acute blurred vision for 1 week. The best-corrected visual acuity of the left eye was 0.01. Funduscopic examination showed multiple grayish patches around the left macula. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) demonstrated train-track hyperreflective lesions over the inner nuclear layer of the left eye. Afterwards, he experienced sudden slurred speech with fair comprehension. Magnetic resonance imaging and angiography of the brain demonstrated left lacunar infarction with severe left ICA stenosis. After anticoagulant therapy, his dysarthria and left visual acuity were improved significantly. Conclusions: To our knowledge, PAMM in coincidence with lacunar infarction induced by ICA stenosis is firstly described in the literature. PAMM could be a critical warning of ICA stenosis, and this case can alert ophthalmologists to survey ICA stenosis in patients with PAMM.

Detection of paracentral acute middle maculopathy (PAMM) can prevent blindness and death

“…Paracentral acute middle maculopathy can also develop after internal carotid artery stenting 30 and endovascular coil embolization 31 and can be associated with internal carotid stenosis. 32 In these cases, PAMM may be the result of insufficiency of the central retinal artery or cilioretinal artery, because of released thrombi or emboli or generalized hypoperfusion. The detection of PAMM, especially perivenular PAMM, indicates the need to exclude retinal venous or artery obstruction.…”