[Idiopathic macular edema, macular hole, retinal detachment and retinal fibrosis as complications of the involutional vitreoretinal syndrome].

The author suggests calling the involution vitreoretinal syndrome a characteristic symptom complex of vitreoretinal changes occurring in advanced age. He distinguishes three stages in the course of this syndrome an early one, whose signs are, among other things, destruction of the anterior segment of the vitreous body, presence of glial plaques of the retina (coin-shaped and flap reflexes of the fundus oculi), and changes of the posterior lenticular capsule in the lentivitreoretinal form of the syndrome. The mature stage is characterized by total destruction of the vitreous body or its detachment, transformation of a part of glial plaques into individual foci of fibrosis, phacosclerosis of lenticular nucleus. The present communication sums up complications of the syndrome occurring in the third stage of the disease. In 44 of the 109 patients the following complications were observed: macular edema in 6, macular opening in 9, reticular fibrosis in 9, retinal detachment in 8, nuclear cataract in 12. The author explains so high an incidence of complications by the fact that involutional vitreoretinal syndrome cannot be diagnosed at the early stages and that patients come to consult a doctor only when complications are developing as a rule. Physicians' awareness of the early signs of the syndrome may become an essential factor in the prevention of quite a number of intraocular conditions developing in advanced age.