Acute necrotizing retinitis in a patient receiving immunosuppressive therapy.

Patients with impaired immunological defence mechanisms due to malignant invasive conditions such as the leukaemias and their associated cytotoxic drug therapy, or to the administration of immunosuppressive drugs, are particularly prone to infection with organisms usually thought of as benign under normal conditions. In particular the inci- dence of cytomegalic inclusion disease is increasing both in children (Cangir and Sullivan, I966) and adults (Wong and Warner, I962; Smith, I964; Hedley-Whyte and Craighead, I965) under these conditions, and in a very small minority of these patients ocular involve- ment has been reported This is a report of a patient who developed a bilateral necrotizing retinitis while receiving immunosuppressive therapy after a renal transplant operation.