ABSTRACT
When one is faced with a patient having posterior segment intraocular
inflammation (PSII) for the first time, the process of generating a list of
differential diagnoses depends greatly on the predominant ocular signs or features.
Although most diseases present with a degree of many features of inflammation,
such as vitritis, retinal vasculitis, and/or choroiditis, there are often one or two
features that predominate over the others. For example, retinal vasculitis may be
the predominating feature in an eye that also has some vitritis and some papillitis.
Retinal vasculitis as the predominant feature would lead us to consider the more
likely diagnoses of Behc¸et’s disease, sarcoidosis, and tuberculosis rather than other
diseases. In this manner, distilling all the ocular signs into only one or two
predominant clinical features can greatly aid in narrowing down the differential
diagnosis. Of course, the differential diagnosis should also be tailored to other
clinical characteristics of the patient’s history and ocular examination, in particular,
whether or not anterior segment inflammation is present.
