Natural Course of Mild Graves Orbitopathy: Increase of Orbital Fat But Decrease of Muscle Volume With Increased Muscle Fatty Degeneration During a 4-Year Follow-Up.

Purpose: To describe the natural course of orbital fat volume and extraocular muscle volume in mild Graves orbitopathy during a 4-year follow-up. To describe fatty changes within the extraocular muscles.

Patients: Twenty-five patients with mild Graves orbitopathy, who did not require any therapeutic intervention other than supportive therapy, were followed for 4 years.

Some studies on the natural history of Graves' orbitopathy: increase in orbital fat is a rather late phenomenon.

Aim: To describe volumes of orbital fat (FV) and extraocular muscles (MV) in Graves' orbitopathy (GO) as a function of the duration of GO.

Patients: i) Cross-sectional survey among 95 consecutive patients with untreated GO who had been referred to the combined thyroid-eye clinics of our university hospital. ii) Longitudinal survey among 39 of the 95 patients who did not receive any therapeutic intervention and were followed for 1 year.

Do subtypes of graves' orbitopathy exist?

Purpose: To describe the prevalence of fat and muscle volume (MV) increase in Graves' orbitopathy (GO) patients, calculated from computed tomography scans, and the associated ophthalmic and endocrine characteristics.

Design: Consecutive, observational case series.

Participants: Ninety-five consecutive Caucasian GO patients attending the thyroid eye clinic.