Cotton wool spots are an abnormal finding on funduscopic exam of the retina of the eye. They appear as fluffy white patches on the retina. They are caused by damage to nerve fibers and are a result of accumulations of axoplasmic material within the nerve fiber layer. The nerve fibers are damaged by swelling in the surface layer of the retina. The cause of this swelling is due to the reduced axonal transport (and hence backlog and accumulation of intracellular products) within the nerves because of the ischemia. A 1981 analysis concluded that "in most instances, cotton-wool spots do not represent the whole area of ischaemic inner retina but merely reflect the obstruction of axoplasmic flow in axons crossing into much larger ischaemic areas". Associated findings include microvascular infarcts and hemorrhages. The appearance of cotton wool spots may decrease over time.
Diabetes and hypertension are the two most common diseases that cause these spots, and the best treatment would be to treat the underlying disease. In diabetes they are one of the hallmarks of pre-proliferative retinopathy. More rarely, HIV and Purtscher's retinopathy can also lead to the appearance of cotton wool spots.
Famous quotes containing the words cotton, wool and/or spots:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“After all, the wool of a black sheep is just as warm.”
—Ernest Lehman (b. 1920)
“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)