What is uveitis?

• Uveitis is inflammation of the eye, which can present with pain, redness and blurring vision.
• If not treated, can lead to significant vision loss.
• Can affect patients of any age group or any gender.

What is Posterior Uveitis?

Area shaded in red representing the part of the eye which is affected in posterior uveitis.

• Posterior uveitis, affects the back part of the eye involving retina and choroid.
• An inflammation in the choroid would be called choroiditis.
• The inflammation may also arise in, or affect, the retina (retinitis) or in the blood vessels at the back of the eye (vasculitis).
• Posterior uveitis describes where the uveitis is. It is not really a disease in itself. In fact there are a large number of uveitic conditions, which can be described as posterior uveitis. For anyone reading up about their condition, posterior uveitis is a useful term because it has features, which are different from anterior uveitis, the most common form of uveitis.
• Posterior uveitis is potentially a vision threatening uveitis and requires prompt attention, systemic investigations and also admission at times.

What are the causes of Posterior Uveitis?

A variety of conditions can present as posterior uveitis. They all may have quite different causes. So it is often very difficult to define or name the causes of posterior uveitis.

It may be due to infectious agents like bacteria, virus, parasites etc.

Also some systemic diseases like tuberculosis, sarcoidosis can present as posterior uveitis without other generalized symptoms of the disease.

Few such examples of diseases are given below which can present as posterior uveitis:

• Inflammatory conditions: sarcoidosis; Vogt koyanagi Harada disease, Behcet's disease, White dot syndromes.
• Infectious conditions secondary to bacteria, virus, parasites etc.: ocular tuberculosis; toxoplasmosis; ocular syphilis; viral retinitis, HIV infections including cytomegalovirus retinitis etc.
• Masquerade syndrome: Very rarely, there may be intraocular tumors (eg. Intraocular lymphoma) which can manifest as posterior uveitis

Few characteristic features of posterior uveitis are:

• It is usually painless
• It is more likely to impair the vision than other forms of uveitis
• Floaters are common
• Vision can be impaired suddenly or reduce worsen gradually over a period of time

What are the complications and outcome of Posterior Uveitis?

If not diagnosed and treated on time, can lead to blindness

• Retinal detachment
• Optic atrophy
• Macular edema
• Retinal necrosis
• Complicated cataract
• Glaucoma