Behçet’s disease is a systemic vasculitis that affects multiple organs. The most common manifestations are oral and genital ulcerations and recurrent uveitis. Uveitis can be an initial symptom in 10–20% of cases and leads to blindness in 16–25% of patients. The management of this disease is evolving due to the clinical phenotypes recently described in the literature and increasing focus on the detection of subclinical inflammation to enable correct therapeutic decisions. The first line treatment is azathioprine, followed by various immunosuppressive and biological agents as alternatives in severe or refractory cases. This review summarizes scientific articles about the etiology of, diagnostic tools for and treatment of the ocular manifestations of Behçet’s disease available in the PubMed database from 1 January 2016 to 1 May 2021. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to effectively prevent permanent damage and thus improve the life quality of the patients. Therefore, it is crucial to raise awareness of the common clusters of symptoms, use of modern imaging methods, such as ocular computed tomography and fluorescein angiography, and novelty treatment algorithms to enable early diagnosis and appropriate management.

Background. The proximity of the internal carotid artery to the pharyngeal wall poses a risk of injury during nasopharyngeal surgery. Objectives. The aim of this study was to assess the distances between the extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) and the pharyngeal wall. Material and methods. Measurements were taken on certain levels of the pharynx using computed tomography angiography (angio-CT) scans of 97 patients. One-tailed Student's t-test for independent variables and a comparison of expected values for dependent pairs of observations were applied. Results. The shortest distance between the ICA and the pharyngeal wall was 1.1 mm. The ICA is closer to the pharyngeal wall at the epiglottis apex level (16.46 +/- 0.89 mm) than to the Eustachian tube (ET) (19.8 +/- 0.62 mm) (p < 0.0005). In women, the ICA is closer to the ET (19.44 +/- 0.78 mm) than in men (20.17 +/- 0.96 mm) (p = 0.04). In women, the right ICA is closer to the pharyngeal wall than the left ICA at the level of the lower margin of the 2nd cervical corpus vertebra (C2) (right: 17.6 +/- 1.8 mm; left: 20.7 +/- 1.7 mm) (p = 0.002) and at the level of the epiglottis apex (right: 15.2 +/- 1.7 mm; left: 17.4 +/- 1.4 mm) (p = 0.028). The bifurcation of the common carotid artery (CCA) is higher in men (19.48 +/- 2.19 mm below the C2) than in women (21.82 +/- 1.02 mm) (p < 0.001). When the bifurcation is at the level of the epiglottis apex, the ICA is closer to the pharyngeal wall (12.3 +/- 1.69 mm) than in other cases (16.46 +/- 0.89 mm) (p = 0.005). In men, the higher the bifurcation is, the closer the ICA is to the pharyngeal wall at the level of the lower margin of the C2 (p = 0.003). Conclusions. The risk of ICA incision during surgery differs between the pharyngeal levels, genders and sides of the neck. The ICA may be much closer to the pharyngeal wall than described in the literature.