A 39-year-old woman with progressive loss of vision left eye was referred for evaluation. Notably, she had been diagnosed with COVID-19 two weeks beforehand. Examination and ancillary testing confirmed atypical multifocal evanescent white dot syndrome. Possible other masquerades were excluded. A few weeks later, visual acuity improved in the left eye, and symptoms resolved together with normalization of ancillary testing including visual fields.
MEWDS (Multiple evanescent white dot syndrome) has also been recently described as ‘the common cold of the retina’ due to its nature: acute, benign, and self-limited. In our case, we refer to the condition as ‘the uncommon cold of the retina’ because of its atypical ICGA appearance which we believe may be linked to the recent COVID-19 viral infection in our patient. This particular inflammatory process may be included among other ophthalmic manifestations of emerging viral disease.
