Utility of ultrasound in unilateral endocrine exophthalmos

Sometimes thyroid diseases cause exophthalmos in both eyes and in these cases the diagnosis is easy. The diagnosis becomes more difficult in case of unilateral exophthalmos and especially when the patient is not known to have a thyroid disease. In these cases more serious pathologies are suspected, like orbital tumours, etc. The authors show the value of echography in these patients and also in those where exophthalmos is not so evident and a thyroid disease has not yet been diagnosed. With echography they have established Graves' disease. By performing some simple thyroid tests they avoided expensive and invasive investigations like CT. In 14 years they have studied 2684 cases of orbital pathology, in particular the 365 cases in whom Graves' disease was suspected and in whom in 11.6% of these a unilateral exophthalmos was present.