Introduction: The malignant optic glioma in adulthood is a rare tumour of middle-age which causes an early loss of vision and always leads to death within a year.
Case report: The authors report a case of this disease in a 68-year-old woman with a history of rapidly deteriorating vision and death 6 months after surgery.
Conclusion: A review of the previous cases showed the accordance of these with the syndrome defined first by Hoyt et al. in 1973; a statistical analysis reveals that the radiotherapy improves the survival whereas the role of chemotherapy is still not definite.