PURPOSE: To report a case of recovery of bilateral cortical blindness in a patient with posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome. CASE SUMMARY: A 46-year-old female visited the ophthalmology department due to abrupt visual acuity decrease. Ten days earlier, she had received conservative management due to anemia caused by menorrhagia and uterine prolapse. She underwent a gynecological operation to remove a uterine myoma two days previously, and was given a blood transfusion postoperatively because of excessive bleeding. After the transfusion, she complained of acute blurred vision. Her best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was hand motion 10 cm in both eyes. There were no abnormal specific findings except retinal dot hemorrhage at the temporal side in the left eye on fundus examination. Her pupillary light reflex was normal and optical coherence tomography examination was unremarkable in both eyes. However, flash visual evoked potential findings showed reduced P100 amplitude in both eyes and she was diagnosed with posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome based on brain magnetic resonance imaging. After close observation without any treatment, the symptoms gradually improved. Finally, her BCVA recovered to 1.0 and P1 and P100 amplitudes were restored to normal range in both eyes at 16 weeks from the first diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: A patient complained of bilateral visual loss without other neurological symptoms after chronic blood loss and blood transfusion. She recovered visual acuity completely with prompt diagnosis of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome and close observation only.
Anemia ; Blindness, Cortical ; Blood Transfusion ; Brain ; Diagnosis ; Evoked Potentials, Visual ; Female ; Hand ; Hemorrhage ; Humans ; Leiomyoma ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Menorrhagia ; Middle Aged ; Ophthalmology ; Posterior Leukoencephalopathy Syndrome* ; Reference Values ; Reflex ; Retinaldehyde ; Tomography, Optical Coherence ; Uterine Prolapse ; Vision Disorders* ; Visual Acuity

PURPOSE: We evaluated the surgical prognoses of patients with advanced cataract who were unable to be evaluated by fundus imaging and their satisfaction with daily life.METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 748 eyes of 480 patients who underwent cataract surgery from January 2015 to December 2017. Preoperative factors, surgical technique, degree of cataract, and the best-corrected visual acuity for 1 and 6 months after surgery were analyzed. Among 91 eyes of 78 patients with advanced cataract who were unable to be evaluated by fundus imaging, the degree of discomfort before surgery and postoperative satisfaction were evaluated.RESULTS: Hypertension was positively correlated with visual acuity after cataract surgery (p = 0.004). Low corneal endothelial cell count, primary open-angle glaucoma, a history of trabeculectomy due to glaucoma, corneal dystrophy or corneal opacity, advanced cataract unable to be evaluated by fundus imaging, hypermature cataract, extracapsular cataract extraction, and intracapsular cataract extraction and visual acuity <0.5 after 1 month showed negative correlations with the visual outcomes after 6 months (p = 0.019, p = 0.002, p = 0.037, p = 0.001, p = 0.004, p = 0.012, p = 0.00, and p = 0.00, respectively). The risk of a final visual acuity <0.5 after cataract surgery was 3.18-fold higher in cases of advanced cataract, unable to be evaluated by fundus imaging (p = 0.003). Ten patients with 10 eyes postponed surgery due to poor prognoses, which was expected, and six patients (60%) had a best-corrected visual acuity <0.5 after 6 months. Six patients (60%), expected to have a poor prognosis were satisfied after surgery and the postoperative satisfaction was high when compared with a poor visual outcome.CONCLUSIONS: Poor surgical prognoses were expected in advanced cataract patients unable to be evaluated by fundus imaging. However, advanced cataract patients, who postponed surgery due to an unfavorable visual prognosis, showed a higher subjective satisfaction when compared with the postoperative visual acuity.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine daytime sleepiness-related factors, including sleeping patterns and daytime activities, in shift and non-shift workers. METHODS: One hundred and twenty two shift workers, and two hundred and fifty four non-shift workers, were selected and identified in terms of their general characteristics, such as age, tenure, educational level, marital status and religion. Screening questionnaires were composed of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) for evaluation of daytime sleepiness, the Multidimensional Fatigue Scale (MFS) for fatigue, and the Korean version of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for sleeping patterns. RESULTS: The shift worker group reported significantly higher rates of sleep disturbance and higher fatigue scores compared with the non-shift workers (all p<0.01). The prevalence of daytime sleepiness was higher in the shift workers (19.7%) than the non-shift workers (10.6%) (p<0.05). The significant daytime sleepiness-related factors were found to be shift work, tenure and difficulties in falling back to sleep once woken (p<0.05). Shift work was proved to be an important factor in workers aged less than 40 years (p<0.05). However, this association was not evident in workers aged 40 years and over. CONCLUSIONS: The shift workers showed a significantly higher prevalence of daytime sleepiness compared with the non-shift workers. The present study suggests a need for the implementation of sleeping and fatigue management programs for shift workers in order to improve working efficiency and control safety accidents during shift work.
Adult* ; Fatigue* ; Humans ; Male* ; Marital Status ; Mass Screening ; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (U.S.) ; Prevalence ; Questionnaires

PURPOSE: We prospectively investigated clinical changes and long-term outcomes after administration of the drugs recommended by the Age-Related Eye Disease Study-2 to patients with intermediate age-related macular degeneration (AMD). METHODS: This prospective multicenter study enrolled 79 eyes of 55 patients taking lutein and zeaxanthin. The primary endpoint was contrast sensitivity; this was checked every 12 months for a total of 36 months after treatment commenced. The secondary endpoints were visual acuity, central macular thickness, and drusen volume; the latter two parameters were assessed using spectral domain optical coherence tomography. RESULTS: The mean patient age was 72.46 ± 7.16 years. Contrast sensitivity gradually improved at both three and six cycles per degree. The corrected visual acuity was 0.13 ± 0.14 logMAR and did not change significantly over the 36 months. Neither the central macular thickness nor drusen volume changed significantly. CONCLUSIONS: Contrast sensitivity markedly improved after treatment, improving vision and patient satisfaction. Visual acuity, central retinal thickness, and drusen volume did not deteriorate. Therefore, progression of AMD and visual function deterioration were halted.
Contrast Sensitivity ; Eye Diseases ; Humans ; Lutein ; Macular Degeneration ; Patient Satisfaction ; Prospective Studies ; Retinaldehyde ; Tomography, Optical Coherence ; Visual Acuity ; Zeaxanthins

BACKGROUND: The overall response (20-30%) to chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is quite poor. Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is the rate-limiting enzyme in heme degradation. There is increasing evidence suggesting that the induction of HO-1 might have an important protective effect against oxidative stress including cisplatin containing chemotherapy. This study retrospectively investigated the relationship between HO-1 expression and the response to chemotherapy containing cisplatinin advanced NSCLC patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The medical records including the responses to chemotherapy of fifty nine cases were evaluated retrospectively, and the tissue samples of these patients were immunohistochemically stained for HO-1. RESULTS: Forty three of the fifty nine patients(72.8%) showed positive staining for HO-1 in their cancer tissues. There was no significant difference according to the cell type, stage and tumor size. In addition, there was no correlation between HO-1 expression and the responses to chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: HO-1 expression in tumor tissue dose not predict the response to cisplatin containing chemotherapy in advanced NSCLC. Further prospective studies with a larger number of patients will be needed to confirm these results.
Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung* ; Cisplatin* ; Drug Therapy* ; Heme Oxygenase-1* ; Heme* ; Humans ; Medical Records ; Oxidative Stress ; Retrospective Studies