Neurology Department, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA.
Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2018 Jun 22;18(8):52. doi: 10.1007/s11910-018-0854-2.
In this article, we review illustrative case descriptions of both primary and secondary visual snow from our clinic. We discuss recently proposed criteria for visual snow syndrome and offer a slight modification of these criteria. We also discuss the theories on the pathophysiological mechanisms of visual snow, as well as the current approach to treatment.
Visual snow is a condition where patients see constant, innumerable flickering dots throughout the visual field, similar to "TV static." Though visual snow was originally described in 1995, there were still fewer than 10 cases in the literature prior to 2014. In the last 4 years, this has grown to approximately 200 cases and there has been a concentrated effort to better understand and characterize this condition. It has become apparent that patients who see visual snow frequently have additional visual and non-visual symptoms, and the consistency of these symptoms has led to proposed criteria for visual snow syndrome. When seeing a patient with visual snow, it is important to rule out a possible underlying secondary etiology. Patients with visual snow syndrome frequently have comorbid migraine, but visual snow appears to be a separate entity from persistent migraine aura. The pathophysiology of this syndrome is not clear, but recent neurophysiologic and neuroimaging studies have helped advance our understanding.
本文回顾了我们诊所中原发性和继发性视觉雪的典型病例描述。我们讨论了最近提出的视觉雪综合征标准，并对这些标准稍作修改。我们还讨论了视觉雪的病理生理机制理论以及目前的治疗方法。
视觉雪是一种患者在整个视野中看到持续不断、无数闪烁小点的病症，类似于“电视静态”。尽管视觉雪于 1995 年首次被描述，但在 2014 年之前，文献中仅有不到 10 例病例。在过去的 4 年中，这一数字增加到了大约 200 例，人们也集中精力更好地理解和描述这种病症。很明显，经常出现视觉雪的患者还会出现其他视觉和非视觉症状，这些症状的一致性导致了视觉雪综合征的标准提出。当看到有视觉雪的患者时，排除可能的潜在继发性病因很重要。视觉雪综合征患者常伴有偏头痛，但视觉雪似乎与持续性偏头痛先兆是不同的病症。该综合征的病理生理学尚不清楚，但最近的神经生理学和神经影像学研究帮助我们加深了理解。
