Nutrition Health Chat: Tuesday, Dec. 8th, 5-6 PM Eastern. Learn how vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients affect your health. Free live Q&A. Join us!
Member Comments are provided by individuals and reflect their personal opinions only. Under NO circumstances should you act on any advice or opinion posted in this forum. ALWAYS check with your personal physician before taking any action regarding your health! MedHelp International and our partners, sponsors and affiliates have no obligation to monitor any comments posted on this site, or the content and/or accuracy of such exchanges. MedHelp International does not endorse the views of any user.
Eye Care Archive (Expert Forum)
Double Vision
Our Ask A Doctor Ophthalmology Forum is where you can post your question and receive a personal answer from physicians affiliated with the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Double Vision
by LoreleiCurtis, Mar 26, 2007 12:00AM
About 5 weeks ago I started having a problem with keeping focus followed by double vision. The double vision was very quick to come on, no previous problems with this. I went to my opthamologist who checked my eyes and found that I need a total of 12 prisms - 6 on each eye to bring me to one image, he suggested I see my family doctor. I saw him the following day, he thought I may have had a stroke, I went for blood work and an CT scan request was made on my behalf. After a week this wasn't clearing up so I went to the hospital where I had a CT scan which came back normal, I had a following up with another eye specialist the next day who once she found out I was on Zyban (presrciption to quit smoking)she decided that it must be causing this and to stop and it would take a few weeks to flush out of my system. I immediately stopped taking the Zyban, the double vision has not gone away. I have an appt. with a a neurologist in two weeks but in the mean time I am unable to work as my job is 99.9% computer work and trying to focus on the computer for 9 hours a day is impossible, driving is not a great idea either. It happens within a few minutes of trying to focus on my computer. I must mention that I do have strabismus in my left eye that was diagnosed in 1972, I wear persrciption lenses as well. I saw my eye doctor again a week ago and does not think the strabismus is related to this and is now thinking I could have a viral infection that has attacked the muscles in my eyes because the amount of prisms had gone down to a total of 6-3 on each eye. This has not cleared up and I am unable to function normally at work as well as personally because of this and am about to lose it. Do you have any ideas??? Please help. Thank you.
Doctor's Answer
by Forum-OD-MP, Mar 26, 2007 12:00AM
well yeah: in the short term you could WEAR AN EYE PATCH. that would 'solve' your double vision so that you could at least work. it may look silly but if you're desperate to *function*, that would do it for you. it obviously doesnt really 'solve' anything, but at least you could see your computer again.
as for what is causing your diplopia and how to fix it, you're going to have to keep going to your specialists...
as for what is causing your diplopia and how to fix it, you're going to have to keep going to your specialists...
The specialists will have to tell you what's going on in your particular case, but this is one of the possibilities. A cranial nerve lesion (i.e., a stroke) should show up on MRI, so it's probably not that. Decompensation is a complex, not-well-understood process involving visual dynamics and is "invislble" to scans.
It's a diagnosis of exclusion -- if they don't find anything else, that's probably it. Prisms correction can get you functional, but vision therapy (and maybe surgery) may be necessary to completely fix it, if that's what you want to do.
Good luck!