Cotton-wool-spot

German: Cotton-wool-Herd

1 Definition

Cotton wool spots are cotton ball-like whitish-yellow retinal patches in the funduscopic findings.

2 Etiology

From a histological point of view, the cotton wool spots are swellings of the axon within the retinal fiber layer (stratum neurofibrarum). They derive from an ischemic functional disorder of the neuroaxonal transport within the framework of various retinopathies and thereby represent the morphological correlate of infarctions of the nerve fibers.