Acute Bilateral Blindness

Acute bilateral blindness is an emergent condition that may signal life-threatening disease. This article details an emergency medicine approach to the patient with acute bilateral blindness, and reports a case of an elderly woman whose sole presenting complaint was acute loss of vision. She was ultimately diagnosed as having pulmonary embolism. The approach focuses on identification of life-threatening disease processes, while differentiating between ocular, psychogenic, and cortical etiologies.