13 year old has visual disturbance

[jripley]

My 13 year old son has a strange visual disturbance.  He says his field of vision brightens for a few seconds then returns to normal, kind of like increasing the brightness on a computer monitor.  He also says he has mild headaches.  He never complains about them, says they dont really bother him.  He thought the visual brightening was normal, like ringing ears so never mentioned  it to me before so he's had them for at least a year i believe.  THey happen about twice a week.  Took him to his pediatrician who found nothing wrong with him, (except his vision is slightly worse than before) so refered us to a pediatric eye specialist.  Have an appt in 2 weeks.

He has a little trouble seeing far away so has glasses but rarely uses them.  He also plays computer games a lot and the nintendo gameboy.  Maybe it's eyestrain? He is also going through a growth spurt.  Maybe hormones?

[Forum-OD-MP]

sometimes those pediatricians drive me crazy.  IMO he does not need a "pediatric ophthalmologist" for that.  pretty much any general practice ophthalmologist or optometrist would be fine.

what he is describing does not sound serious to me.  could be a form of ocular migraine or something like that.  certainly worth investigating, but i seriously doubt the pediatric ophthalmologist is going to find anything too interesting during the exam that a general practice eye doc would not/could not detect.

eyestrain/computer games would not cause "brightness".  neither would hormones.  its likely vascular IMO (ocular migraine or migraine aura, even w/o pain).  we'll see, i guess.  i would not consider this dangerous.

[jripley]

Also, he says he notices it more when he gets up from lying on our sofa.  Dont know what to make of that.

[Ag-i-doc]

AH  now you nailed it:

now this sounds like "POSTURAL HYPOTENSION".  it was vascular.  no big deal.  at your appointment tell the eye doc all this info.