Mucormycoses: serious complication of high-dose corticosteroid therapy for traumatic optic neuropathy.

Mucormycosis is harmless to a healthy person, but can cause opportunistic infections in immunocompromised patients, and once it has invaded internal organs is frequently fatal. Traumatic optic neuropathy is a rare complication of maxillofacial trauma. Management is controversial, and there are no treatment guidelines in the literature. The main methods of treatment of this condition employed today are high-dose corticosteroids and surgical optic nerve decompression, either alone or in combination. In this case, the patient was in good health, but received high-dose corticosteroids for 2 weeks, which temporarily diminished immune response and permitted the development of mucormycosis.