The eye is an extraordinary sense organ that provides information about the world around us. It helps to recognize shapes, color, movement etc from the moment you wake up till you close your eyes during sleep. Vision is an extraordinary perception and understanding of things that you are not able to touch, smell, taste or hear.
Normal perfect eyesight has 20/20 vision. This means at 20 feet distance a person can see letters that a normal eye is able to see. Visual disturbance occurs when there is interference in the normal eyesight.
Causes And Symptoms Of Common Visual Disturbances
Let us know the above mentioned visual disturbances in brief:
- Double vision: Also called as diplopia it is a condition in which the person sees two images of one object. Diplopia can be monocular or binocular. If only one eye is involved it is referred as monocular and involvement of both the eyes is referred as binocular.Causes of double vision can be cataracts, diabetes, hypertension, weakness of eye muscles, injury to cornea, neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis etc. Double vision can occur in stroke, brain cancer, aneurysm of arteries etc.
- Partial or complete blindness: In partial blindness there is some vision while in complete blindness the patient cannot see. Partial blindness can be corrected with glasses, surgery or with contact lenses. Blindness can occur due to many causes such as glaucoma, diabetes, advanced age, stroke, retinal degeneration, cataract, injury to eye.
- Blurred vision: Blurred vision is when the person sees things and objects around him to be dull and hazy. One of the most common reasons for blurred reason is cataract. There are many other causes such as retinal diseases, migraine headache, abrasion on cornea, infection in eye, refractory error etc.
- Color blindness: People with color blindness are unable to distinguish between many colors which a normal eye can easily do. Most people are color blind partially. The causes of color blindness are advanced age, glaucoma, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, optic neuritis, side effect after exposure to toxic chemicals and fertilizers.
- Pain in eye: It can cause discomfort in the eye. It can give a scratchy feeling or sore feeling in the eye. Infection, conjunctivitis, foreign body in eye, improper contact lenses, stye and chalazion, eyelid injury, are some of the common condition that give rise to pain accompanied with visual disturbance.
- Halos: It is a condition of eye in which circles appear around the light. Halos are common occurrence in glaucoma, migraine, corneal damage etc.
Treatment For Visual Disturbances
Treatment of visual disturbance depends on the underlying cause. Once the cause is known, treatment plan is charted out by the doctor. Sometimes there is no need of treatment as the condition resolves on its own when the underlying cause is cured.
Patient feels relieved from blurred vision after migraine attack as resolved. To prevent such episodes in future preventive medicines are prescribed by the doctor. Visual disturbances can be cleared by using medicines in some cases while some may be corrected by wearing suitable glasses and contact lens. Surgery may be necessary whenever conservative cure is not possible.