Ocular vasodilation and angiogenesis in Potter's syndrome.

At autopsy we examined eight eyes of six infants with Potter's syndrome, an idiopathic multisystem condition with a constellation of ocular anomalies, to explore its ocular component more fully and systematically. A striking abnormality in some cases was the presence of dilated intraocular blood vessels, and these were sometimes associated with retinal and preretinal neovascularization reminiscent of the vasoproliferative stage of retrolental fibroplasia. Since oxygen therapy cannot be implicated in these cases, other causes, either genetic or environmental, must be sought. The presence of nonretinal ocular vascular anomalies, such as iris capillary dilation, peripapillary angioma formation, and vascular anomalies in nonocular tissue, point to a generalized derangement in the control of ocular angiogenesis. Our study indicated that an understanding of the pathogenesis of the vascular anomalies in Potter's syndrome is clearly relevant to other more common retinopathies that are associated with neovascularization.