Abstract

Transient monocular blindness(amaurosis fugax) is uncommon in young people and its mechanism is rarely demonstrated. We report a case of young patient with recurrent amaurosis fugax of mosaic pattern. A 18 year-old female migraineur experienced recurrent episodes of monocular blindness of her left eye, which clustered over 3 weeks. The episodes lasted for 3 to 10 minutes and were not associated with head- ache. She reported that visual loss began as several dark spots scattered on the visual field which enlar- ged slowly over one to three minutes and eventually coalesced, resulting complete blindness in affected eye. After a few minutes, the vision returned in a reverse pattern; patches of vision eventually enlarging to full field. Intracranial and extracranial cerebral arteries were normal on magnetic resonance angiography. After propranolol medication, the attack was no longer observed. Amaurosis fugax in young people have different patterns of visual loss from those in elderly. The mosaic pattern of transient monocular blind- ness in young people suggested a migraine variant with benign prognosis. Korean Journal of Headache 5(2):148-152, 2004