Diagnosis of von Hippel-Lindau disease in a patient with blindness resulting from bilateral optic nerve hemangioblastomas.

Hemangioblastomas are uncommon tumors that occur mostly in the cerebellum, medulla, and spinal cord. Supratentonal hemangioblastomas are rare [i ], and hemangioblastomas of the optic nerve have, to our knowledge, been reported in only eight previous cases, all of which were unilateral [2, 3]. We report a case of bilateral optic nerve hemangioblastomas, in which the resultant visual loss was the only indication in a patient who had von Hippel-Lindau disease and occult renal cell carcinoma.