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CASE REPORT
Retinal artery vasculitis secondary to administration of influenza vaccine
  1. Gwyn Samuel Williams1,
  2. Sam Evans2,
  3. Damien Yeo2,
  4. Ayad Al-bermani1
  1. 1University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, UK
  2. 2Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital of Wales, Wales, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Gwyn Samuel Williams, gwynwilliams{at}doctors.org.uk

Summary

There are many differential diagnoses in investigating patients who present with retinal vasculitis, and the laboratory investigations used to investigate this have low-to-moderate sensitivity and/or specificity. Diagnoses include conditions such as tuberculosis or sarcoidosis, which may require long courses of antibiotics or immunosuppression. Influenza vaccination has been recognised as a cause of vasculitis for decades, although a purely ocular presentation is rare. We present a case of a 78-year-old Caucasian woman presenting with a single vessel arterial vasculitis of the right eye 8 weeks following influenza vaccination at her local general practitioner practice. We encourage ophthalmologists, rheumatologists and uveitis specialists to consider influenza vaccine as a cause of ocular vasculitis if the vaccine has been recently administered.

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