Question Aunt 93 loss vision referred to tumor specialist

[cgmarte]

I have an Aunt 93 diagnosed with AMD in one eye recently she woke up with sudden visio loss in her good eye.  She went to the eye Dr and they could not identify the reson and told her to come back in 30 days.  A few weeks later she had broken blood vessels that caused her eye to be black all around the eye and red.  She was scared and went to emergency and was told it would clear up on it's own.  Her vision is so blurry she cannot see the food on her plate has to have assistance walking and cannot dress herself.

In her 30 day follow-up they have referred her to a Dr in SF 4 hours away to check for tumor behind eye.  We have been told she has blood behind eye and they want to check for a tumor.

We are going to the Doctor on Friday what questions should I ask.  We are overwhelmed at how hard this is on my aunt and not sure what level of care she is going to require going forward.

[cgmarte]

Thanks so much for the reponse.  The Dr office told we needed to go to this dr (Dr. Devron Char in SF specialist in Ophthalmology, to see if a tumor is present in what she calls here good eye (she told me it was not diagnosed with AMD previously.  

Since this is her good eye and not the one that she was having AMD.  I guess we jumped to the conclusion that it was AMD.  She was having trouble a year ago with her other eye (the bad eye) and went to the same Dr because she had blood in back of eye and he wanted it checked for a tumor.  He told us it was just blood behind the eye and would clear up and it did but now the good eye is going bad.

Thanks for the questions we use these for the appointment we were really lost on what is going on,  Our Aunt lives 4 hours away and hard to get answers since we were not at all the appts with her.  She is very fightened that her sight is very very poor and I think she senses this is very serious.

Thanks for your help.

[Michael J Kutryb, MD]

First of all, I am sorry for the problems your aunt is going through.  Was she seeing an ophthalmologist?  Did he specifically mention a tumor or wet macular degeneration.  Both possibilities are very serious.  I have to be honest - usually a tumor would be readily evident so I am unclear what exactly your doctor said.  Perhaps he really doesn't know what it is or maybe he just doesn't want to jump to conclusions.  So the main question to ask is - what is going on?  What can be done about it?  What is the prognosis?  If there is a tumor - is it a metastatic lesion from another area of the body or a primary uveal melanoma? Is there a serious mortality risk?  Statistically, macular degeneration is much more likely but prognosis there is not very good for vision, although  new avastin or lucentis injection are a huge treatment improvement.  At 93 years old - I suspect your aunt can mentally and emotionally handle this better than you think but she will need lots of physical support and emotional as well.

MJK MD

MJK MD