British doctors have recorded cortical blindness as one of the complications of coronavirus. The medical history was described in the scientific journal Cureus.
Scientists have identified a new complication in COVID-19, which manifests itself in the complete loss of vision. Specialists at the Royal Hospital in Derby (UK) discovered a complication when examining a 54-year-old woman infected with a coronavirus, who did not suffer from chronic diseases. The patient complained of fever, dry cough, and myalgia (muscle pain). At the time of admission to the clinic, the woman had a temperature of 38.4 degrees, the pulse reached 114 beats per minute, blood pressure was kept at 125/78 millimeters of mercury, and saturation was 82 percent. After further deterioration of the condition, non-invasive ventilation of the lungs was started, then the woman was connected to mechanical ventilation.
In the course of treatment, broad-spectrum antibiotics were prescribed, which had a positive effect. On the 21st day of treatment, doctors observed a tonic-clonic seizure, after which the doctors performed a computed tomography of the brain. The results of the study allowed us to speak about the presence of the posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) in the patient.
Within ten days after the CT scan, it turned out that the patient had cortical blindness, a disease caused by damage to the occipital lobe of the brain and accompanied by a complete lack of vision. In this case, the reaction of the pupils to light was normal.
On the basis of analyzes and observations, physicians concluded that the main cause of PRES was not high blood pressure, but sepsis. Over the next eight weeks, after discovering signs of cortical blindness, the woman recovered partially – she began to distinguish between shapes and colors, but the visual impairment was still very serious.
At the end of January, Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States confirmed that smoking is a high risk factor for hospitalization, complications and death from COVID-19. In a study with more than seven thousand participants, it was found that those who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years had a 2.25 times higher chance of hospitalization and a 1.89 times higher risk of death.
