Revisiting the Awareness and Understanding the Associations between Intracranial Tumors and Optic Neuropathy

The aim of this paper is to report clinically various cases of intracranial tumors in patients referred to glaucoma clinic for consultation. The secondary aim was to increase the awareness of intracranial tumors in atypical cases of glaucoma. We present the retrospective analysis of five patients referred to glaucoma clinic for consultation. Due to atypical course of the disease, in addition to standard glaucoma examinations, all patients had a neurologic full visual field, color vision, and MRI done. In all patients, intracranial malignancies were found, some patients underwent surgery of the lesions with consecutive clinical improvements. Interestingly, in some patients, coexisting glaucoma was diagnosed. Patients were selected deliberately to present a wide spectrum of possible clinical scenarios when glaucoma may be complicated by intracranial tumors. Sometimes, the relevance of intracranial tumors with respect to their influence on the clinical picture of the optic nerve cannot be established. To conclude, in the “atypical cases of glaucoma” the assessment of the optic nerve may indicate the necessity of neuroimaging in differential diagnostics.