Ten-year study on clinical echography in intraocular disease

During the past 10 years, clinical echography has been developed to a valuable and even indispensable examination method with which more than 25 various conditions and diseases or groups of lesions within the globe can be differentiated (the majority of them with a high degree of realiability and accuracy). Two signigicant steps to this end were the optimizing of both instrumentation and examination techniques as well as the standardization of the A-scan method. A few of the major conditions and diseases of the posterior segment of the globe, e.g. retinal detachments and retinoblastomas, are discussed in detail in this study, while ocular foreign bodies, malignant melanomas and other choroidal tumors and pseudo-tumors are discussed in two other studies presented in these proceedings (see pp. 109,141). At the end of this 10-year period, clinical echography, although quite mature, is still a very young examination method which can and will be further improved to an even more reliable and at the same time easier technique. Both A-and B-scan techniques are important for the diagnosis of intraocular diseases: the (standardized) A-scan method for a reliable detection as well as quantitative and kinetic evaluation, the B-scan technique for a better demonstration of the shape and topographic relationship of lesions in the vitreous and at the posterior pole.