These discs (Figure 1 shows the left disc) show features associated with disc drusen. These common (one in 300 prevalence) lesions are of great interest to eye care practitioners as they may mimic a number of other more sight-threatening conditions. Disc drusen themselves have little impact at all other than occasional field and, rarely, acuity compromise. The lesions are extracellular concretions of cellular debris and waste products which accumulate within the optic nerve head just anterior to the lamina cribrosa. They seem to develop faster where there is nerve compression and they tend to follow in families along an autosomal-dominant pattern of inheritance. I have only ever seen them as a bilateral condition.
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