A 65-year-old man had spent a week with a left eye that was painful, red, and losing vision. When his ophthalmologists in Brazil examined the fluid-filled chamber at the front of the eye, they saw distinct bands of cells stacked on top of one another, a pattern known as the candy-stripe sign.
The stripes are a classic clue to ghost cell glaucoma, an uncommon form of glaucoma in which worn-out red blood cells clog the eye's drainage system and push internal pressure upward. The case, from physicians in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo, was published online Aug. 6 in JAMA Ophthalmology.
