Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about central retinal artery occlusion.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero tofinals.com slash central retinal artery occlusion

or in the ophthalmology section of the zero

de finals medicine book. So let's get straight into it. Central retinal artery occlusion occurs when

something blocks the flow of blood through the central retinal artery. The central retinal

artery supplies the blood to the retina. It's a branch of the ophthalmic artery,

which is a branch of the internal carotid artery. The most common cause of occlusion in the retinal

artery is atherosclerosis. It can also be caused by giant cell arteritis or temporal arteritis,

where vasculitis affecting the ophthalmic or the central retinal artery reduces the blood flow. So what are the risk factors? Well,

risk factors for retinal artery occlusion by atherosclerosis are the same as for any other

cardiovascular disease. So things like older age,

family history, smoking, alcohol consumption, hypertension, diabetes, poor diet,

inactivity and obesity will all put the patient at higher risk.

Patients who are at higher risk for retinal artery occlusion

secondary to giant cell arthritis

are typically white patients over the age of 50,

particularly females,

and those patients who are already affected by giant cell arthritis

or polymyalgia rheumatica.

So how does it present? Well, blockage of the central retinal artery causes sudden painless loss of vision. And this is the key presenting

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