Visual Field Defects in Pseudotumor Cerebri: A Comparison of Gladmann and Automated Static Perimetry

Idiopathic intracranial hypertension was first described by Quincke in 1897. It was called pseudotumor cerebri by Warrington in 1914 and has also been named otitic hydrocephalus (Symonds, 1931), hypertensive meningeal hydrops (Davidoff, 1937) and toxic hydrocephalus (McAlpine, 1937). The disorder was not well delineated as a clinical entity until the 1940's when cerebral angiography with water soluble contrast agents was added to pneumoencephalography as techniques to tease out cases of mass lesions. Foley coined the term benign intracranial hypertension in 1955 but it was not until studies done in the 1980 1s in which the high incidence of visual loss was pointed out (Corbett, 1982) that necessitated the term benign be dropped.