Clinical Profile and a Comparison of Intravenous Methylprednisolone and Oral Prednisolone for Acute Attack of Optic Neuritis Attending at a Tertiary Care Hospital – A Hospital-Based Prospective Study

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical profile and short-term visual outcome of optic neuritis (ON) patients attending to our outpatient department (OPD). Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study carried out over a period of two years among 30 patients and followed up for type of presentation, recurrence rate, and visual outcome. Results: Mean age was 23 ± 2 years (26.7%). Female preponderance was observed (70% of cases). Papillitis (53.33% of eyes) was more common than retrobulbar neuritis (46.67% of eyes). All were unilateral presentations. All patients presented with sudden loss of vision, whereas pain was an accompanying feature only in 11 cases (36.7%). The red and green colours were normal in 24 cases at presentation, whereas five had red and green defects and one had only red defect. On follow-up, colour defects became normal in all. In our study, it was the right eye ( n = 27) mostly affected (90%). However, in the present study, only 53.33% of the patients could recover visual acuity (VA) to this level 6/6. Three patients had previous diagnosis of transverse myelitis (10%). Recurrence was observed in 13.3% of eyes and was more common in cases of retrobulbar neuritis and transverse myelitis. Drawback of Our Study: Small number of cases and a shorter period of follow-up. Not all patients were willing to get admitted to our study, and we could not give intravenous methylprednisolone to all of them. Conclusion: We found that papillitis was more frequent than retrobulbar neuritis in the Asian region and had a mostly unilateral presentation. Association with multiple sclerosis (MS) was low and visual outcome over 6/9 or more seemed quite good with lower recurrence rates. Treatment with oral prednisolone also had a good result with no recurrence rate within two years.