Clinical characteristics of asymptomatic Terson syndrome in the patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage

AIM: To investigate clinical characteristics of asymptomatic Terson syndrome and its clinical impact in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). METHODS: This retrospective, interventional study included 31 patients with aneurysmal SAH, and the medical records were reviewed. In addition to baseline characteristics of the study population such as age, sex, and underlying medical history, multi-modal imaging analysis, including fluorescein angiography (FA), spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), were also reviewed. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Hunt-Hess (HH) grade, and Fisher scale at the time of admission, and functional outcome by using modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at 6mo were compared. RESULTS: Of the 31 patients, 10 patients (32.3%) were diagnosed with Terson syndrome. All the patients with Terson syndrome did not report visual symptoms at the time of ophthalmologic screening. FA showed microvascular changes of retinal capillaries and varying degrees of disc leakage. SD-OCT allowed intuitive anatomical localization of multi-layered retinal hemorrhages and assessment of ellipsoid zone integrity. The patients with Terson syndrome showed significantly worse GCS (P=0.047) and HH grade (P=0.025) than those without, except Ficher scale (P=0.385). There was no significant difference in the mRS (P=0.250) at 6mo. Among baseline factors, the HH grade was the only significant factor associated with Terson syndrome (B=1.079, P=0.016). CONCLUSION: In our study, 32.3% of the patients have Terson syndrome without visual symptoms. The baseline HH grade is significantly correlated with Terson syndrome, and there is no significant difference in the functional outcome between the patients with and without Terson syndrome. Terson syndrome may develop without any visual symptoms as shown in our study, and ophthalmologic screening may be recommended to prevent further visual deterioration especially in the patients with poor HH grade at the time of aneurysmal SAH.