Bilateral central retinal vein occlusion in a 40-year-old man with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pneumonia

The authors are commenting on the study entitled: “Bilateral central retinal vein occlusion in a 40-year-old man with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) pneumonia” published by Waqar et al. in Am J Case Rep 2020;21:e927691-1-e927691-5, which reported the first case of bilateral central retinal vein occlusion in a 40-year old man with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia. The authors concluded that the COVID-19 pneumonia combined with hypertension and morbid obesity led him to an inflammatory state that resulted in bilateral central retinal vein occlusion. The lack of performing fluorescein angiography is the great limitation of this article. Fluorescein angiography would have been required in the presented case to make the complete diagnosis of disease, to establish the occlusion type (a milder form called nonischemic or a severe form called ischemic) of the bilateral central retinal vein occlusion, and to explain why the final visual acuity to the left eye remained significantly low (e.g., half the normal value) when discharged from the clinic.