Pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome induced Panuveitis associated with SARS-CoV- 2 infection: What the Ophthalmologists need to know.

The diagnosis of bilateral panuveitis was made in a 9-year-old girl who was referred to our hospital for blurred vision accompanied by periorbital and abdominal pain. Endothelial dusting, vitreous haze and optic nerve edema were deemed as signs of involvement of all segments of the eye. The bloodwork results were suggestive of infectious uveitis, with elevated inflammatory markers and the patient was treated with IV antibiotics. Cerebral-CT was normal, screening for common infectious causes of uveitis and cultures were negative. There was no history of autoimmune disease, and autoimmune antibody tests were negative. Pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome induced panuveitis, secondary to SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS), was suspected by the infectious disease consultant. The syndrome commonly affects school-age children and represents a generalized inflammatory response in the body that appears about one month after the initial infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Initial symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, eye redness, rashes, dizziness, accompanied by laboratory evidence of inflammation unexplained by any other plausible cause. The patient's coronavirus IgG titer was positive, while the RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 virus, taken from the nasopharyngeal swab, was negative. As all the other investigations turned out negative, COVID-19 was the only presumptive cause for the pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS-TS). A diagnosis of probable COVID-19 induced uveitis was made and the patient started IV Dexamethasone, followed by oral steroids that were gradually tapered and made a full recovery. The aim of this report was to shed light and enrich the scarce literature available on Uveitis as a sign of pediatric inflammatory syndrome following COVID-19 infection.